Childhood obesity is at an all-time high in the United States. The Institute of Medicine estimates that over 9 million Americans over the age of 2 and below the age of 18 can be clinically defined as being overweight. Among the reasons they cite are dietary imbalances and an increase in sedentary behavior both in and out of school. In the plainest language possible, kids today are consuming more energy than they expend. The problem basically boils down to a lack of exercise.

These unpleasant figures got me thinking about what we can do as a society to promote healthier living, especially in our children. I can think of two things that have needed massive restructuring for decades. One is school lunches, the other is physical education.

It wasn't that long ago that I was a student. I clearly recall what passed for physical education throughout my entire primary and secondary studies. In recent years, nothing has really changed. Gym classes are designed with no clear goal in mind. Sometimes they act as introductory sport lessons, other times as little more than babysitting. Neither are acceptable uses of the woefully limited resources afforded to schools, nor can they really qualify as being "education" per se. When I was in school, calisthenics and nutrition was a week-long unit, not the basis of the very concept of health like it should be.

So, how difficult would it really be to turn the ineffective (and frankly embarrassing) experience of typical American physical education into a simple workout and nutrition program? When adults want to get in shape they do concentrated workouts several times a week and adjust their diets. If grown people applied the lessons of the traditional PE system, they would attempt to achieve the same thing by playing one week of lacrosse, one week of basketball and one week of something absurd like Frisbee golf (an actual unit in my high school gym class).

Physical education could be so much more than a silly mish-mash of games. Leave the sports to extracurricular programs and concentrate instead on the recommended balanced workout three times a week, supplemented with a lunch program that makes sense. Pizza, chicken nuggets and least of all candy vending machines have no place in American schools. Those things are all indulgences, not the everyday fare of healthy individuals. There is strong data from European studies to support the institution of a vending machine ban and a healthier lunch program. France, for instance, saw its first decline in childhood obesity rates in decades when it did just that.

Instilling a routine involving a decent cardiovascular workout in our children would go a long way in combating obesity. Furthermore, there are plenty of studies that indicate the effectiveness of regular exercise on anxiety and depression, two other problems that have seen a rise in prevalence in modern youth. Simple, proven fitness programs would be exceedingly easy to apply to a standard school curriculum in place of the traditional system. Learning the rules of floor hockey is all well and good, but it won't guarantee a sustained elevated heart rate or promote weight loss.