Obama takes on childhood obesity

I first started noticing it about 10 years ago. I was watching a friend's kids. A gorgeous day in Silver Spring, hot but beautiful. It was summer, middle of the day. I took the kids to the park — Nolte Field. Not one other child was there.

When I was a kid, I never saw an empty park on a hot, beautiful day.

We all know, have known for a long time, that childhood obesity is a huge problem, and we know that kids need to be more active. You can't keep a skateboarder from being active. Apart from rain or snow, there's very little that will keep a skateboarder from skating. Obesity is almost nonexistent among skaters.

I told you before about how the kids and I will go to a skatepark and literally stay all day. We do take breaks but for the most part, we're skating the entire time.

Obama gets it. This needs to be encouraged, not discouraged. Our community should support this, not fight against it.

The task force, created by the president as part of the first lady's "Let's Move" campaign, which launched in February, defined success by the numbers: returning this country to a childhood obesity rate of 5 percent by 2030. The current rate is about 20 percent.

Members of the task force, chaired by White House domestic policy adviser Melody Barnes, focused their efforts on five areas: prenatal care, empowering parents with nutritional information and community support, getting healthier foods into schools, increasing access to healthy foods in neglected urban and rural neighborhoods, and making sure that all kids are physically active.

» White House task force issues report on fighting childhood obesity