In our schools, pizza will remain a vegetable despite attempts to fight obesity in our young.

It's caused a firestorm of controversy, but will an extra serving of something green on a school lunch tray really help America shed the pounds? I'm going to say no. The obesity epidemic - you hear about it everywhere from newspaper headlines to health magazines and doctor offices. The government and health-related agencies have been trying to get us to "eat healthier" for years. But we don't have to read about it to know we have a problem. We just have to ta ke a look around when we go out to the movie theatre, the store, or even walking down the street. The evidence is everywhere. The word epidemic is thrown around so much, we've become immune to it, and merel y shrug it off. How can being overweight be an "epidemic?" I'm not sick, many pe ople respond. It's not killing me, like a true disease gone rampant. I've just g ot a little more around the middle. More to love, right? Indeed. But for how long? Overweight and obese Americans are becoming more the n orm, but so are health issues related to them, such as heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, etc. Choosing to keep the weight on will only up your risks of chronic conditions, he art attacks, and strokes at a younger age, among other health complications. Did you know that the United States holds the trophy for the most money spent on he althcare-related costs? To anyone else around the world, America is regarded as a "sick" country. According to the CDC, medical costs associated with obesity in 2008 were estimated at $147 billion; the medical costs paid by third-party payo rs for people who are obese were $1,429 higher than those of normal weight. That 's a "huge" problem, so to speak. And yet, something as prevelent as obesity can easily be eradicated with two sim ple solutions: Diet alterations through increased daily intake of fruits and ve ggies (smaller portions, too!), and getting up off the couch for 30 minutes to a n hour a day. That's it. Until recently as I began to really investigate these issues, I did not know jus t how much of an "epidemic" obesity truly was. If you want to see the numbers fo r yourself, watch the frightening color show (http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/tr ends.html) about the weight trends over the last 20-30 years on the CDC website. According to CDC, one-third of the American population is now overweight, with some states exhibiting a 30 percent and above overweight population. That's just the adult population. American children, now, are beginning to exhibit the same disturbing health trends. I was born in 1982, and since then, obesity among my peers, and then their children, has nearly tripled. Today, about 17 percent (or 12.5 million) of Americans aged 2 to 19 years are obese. But I am firmly of the belief that the cure has to start at home. An article on the New York Times website (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/us/p olitics/congress-blocks-new-rules-on-school-lunches.html?_r=4) came across my Fa cebook feed this week that grabbed my attention. The Agriculture Department had been pushing the first change in 15 years to the American school lunch program. The biggest, and simplest, change was weeding out the amount of potatoes served by supplementing more fruits and vegetables (excluding tomato paste!) in the di et of American youngsters. And hide the salt shaker.

But of course, the biggest factor in Congress's shooting down the proposed overh aul is simply cost. But another argument that caught my attention was that kids would eat a french fry without a second's thought, whereas vegetables would just get thrown into the trash, untouched. Unless, they say, it is served in the for m of tomato paste on a pizza slice. As a child, I remember the hot lunch trays as the students returned them at the end of lunch. My mom had instilled in me from a very early age the necessity of eating a balanced meal. Since the tender age of 6, I was just plain too scared n ot to eat everything on my plate (especially anything green), since she insisted she had spies in the lunchroom staff that would tell her if anything got thrown away. But all my friends and classmates who were served the same food such as g reen beans, mixed vegetables, an apple did not seem to adhere to the same health y paranoia as I did. Day in and day out, all that "good food" got dumped into a big sluice of would-be compost fodder at the bottom of a 30-gallon trash contain er at the end of the meal. But the fried potato products like Tater Tots went faster than, well, a hot pota to. I will agree that it is a waste of an effort for school lunch programs to force feed children who will only ignore these "yucky veggies" and would, in turn, rat her spend the money on an ice cream or candy instead. The government is trying s o hard to try to supplement the American child's poor eating habits while under their care throughout the public school day. But it has not made a dent yet. It has to start with the parents. We as adults have to set the bar high from a v ery young age. Children look up to us, model us in every aspect as they learn. T hey watch what we do, say, how we use our tools. Heck, I've seen children's toys these days. I saw a toy blackberry phone at the Dollar General last week that v ery nearly looked like the real thing. It's scary, sometimes, how much kids pick up from us. So it stands to reason that what we eat will make a distinct impression on our c hildren and their own eating habits. If a child gets used to seeing fruits and greens in the house, is given them as snacks or as regular visitors on their evening dinner plate, it gives them a hea d start. They will learn to enjoy the healthier foods, and make better choices g rowing up. In my house as a child, I was rarely exposed to candy, so I never dev eloped a taste for sweets. Heck, my Halloween spoils would have to be thrown out every year to make room for the following year's batch. So while I applaud the government's attempts to be proactive in making healthier choices available to our society's younger generations, it's not enough. We as a society have to take care of our own. If we want our children and future gener ations to live long, healthy lives, we have to start today - with ourselves. It will trickle down.