By Thomas Peele
Contra Costa Times
SAN FRANCISCO - America's obesity epidemic threatens to destroy the health care system, the economy and the nation's future, former President Bill Clinton told thousands of school board members gathered in San Francisco Sunday.
He implored them to encourage students to exercise and eat healthy foods and to implement policies based on sound school nutrition and physical activities.
"We are playing Russian roulette with our kids future," Clinton said during a 40-minute mid-day speech to the National School Boards Association at the Moscone Center.
"I was overweight as a kid," he said. "I get that."
Clinton spent the weekend with his wife and Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., as she campaigned and held fundraisers in the Bay Area. The former president didn't mention his wife during his speech. He also spoke on health care at a conference here Saturday.
He did, though, take a swipe at the education policies of his successor, President George W. Bush.
"If I were the dictator I'd get with you and make one change to the No Child Left Behind Act," he said. "You don't need to test everybody every year."
But Clinton used most of his speech to rail against childhood obesity and what he said was its dramatic threat to the future of the country. His Harlem-based William J. Clinton Foundation promotes nutrition and exercise for children through its Healthier Generation initiative.
"We are seeing too many children with adult-onset diabetes," he said, predicting that the country faces "the first generation of children (who will) live shorter lives than their parents."
"States spend $75 billion a year on obesity-related health care," he said. "California spends $8 billion. Imagine what we could do in schools with $75 billion."
Clinton said he blamed some of the problem on financially strapped school districts that contract out cafeteria services to companies that don't put enough emphasis on serving healthy food. He also said cities have less money for recreation programs and spaces.
School board members, he said, have to make school nutrition a priority.
"I don't think anybody wanted this to happen or thought it would happen," he said. "There has been a confluence of factors with how we live and work and raise our children. We have to change it. We cannot allow this to happen."
Clinton, 60, underwent major heart surgery in 2004 to clean clogged arteries. As president he was known for his love of fast food. He even said that during a "heart walk" here Saturday, he was criticized by people on the street for stopping for ice cream.
He told the crowd Sunday that his blood flow was so restricted in 2004 that he should have died.
"After I had my surgery I started to rethink health care," he said. "We have a moral imperative to cover everyone. There are not enough wellness programs."
Clinton said that after Hurricane Katrina he visited a devastated neighborhood in Biloxi, Miss., and met a woman "who could not have been a day over 35."
She was wheelchair bound, obese and had already lost her right leg to diabetes.
The obesity epidemic can be blamed on transfats, sugar and serving sizes, he said, as well as economic pressures that force families to spend less on food. "People with limited incomes are looking at volume purchases. Family budgets for food have not gone up with the rate of inflation."
The collected school board members from all 50 states could be leaders in changing the country's nutritional habits by making sure that nutrition is a part of all curriculums, he said.
"You know how kids are," he said. "We have to make this fun and interesting."
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