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Editorial: Battling childhood obesity should pay dividends

As Georgia's public-school students return to classes in coming weeks, they'll find themselves in the middle of a fight -- the state's freshly declared battle against obesity.

The battle cry was intensified just this week, as data collected through the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System found Georgia's obesity rate had increased by three percentage points in just a year, from 27.7 percent in 2009 to 30.4 percent in 2010.

The new data prompted Dr. Kimberly Redding, director of the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Program at the Georgia Department of Public Health, to tell The Atlanta Journal-Constitution her agency and the state "really have declared war on obesity. ... We know that in Georgia our obesity rates have been climbing steadily over the years to where we feel we have reached a crisis point."

According to data from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Georgia ranked second in the nation last year in terms of childhood obesity. Those youngsters are at risk for many of the same diseases -- diabetes and heart problems, in particular -- that can plague obese adults. Additionally, obese children are at risk to develop asthma, and have a higher risk of premature death, according to state health officials.

As far as the state's children are concerned, the Student Health and Physical Education Act, passed by the Georgia General Assembly in 2009, established pilot programs in five school systems across the state during the last school year which will be expanded to cover all of the state's public schools in the upcoming school year. Voting on the SHAPE Act by the Athens-Clarke County legislative delegation sitting at the time was split, with Republican Sen. Bill Cowsert and Republican Rep. Bob Smith opposing it, and then-Democratic Rep. Doug McKillip, Democratic Rep. Keith Heard and Republican Sen. Ralph Hudgens supporting the initiative.

While there may be some reason to be

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