Thank God the bare midriff look has almost run its course.

Only the skinniest of the skinny can pull it off – and not many people fall in that category. At local high schools, girls have paraded around in low-slung pants and high-flung blouses, revealing love handles and paunches suitable for middle age. The boys aren’t in much better shape. Nor is the generation that produced these children.

As a culture, Americans are fat, dumb and happy when it comes to food. Studies prove we’re fat – two of three adults and 9 million children are chunky or obese. Dumbly, we super-size our meals, snack at all hours and eschew exercise. Happily, we act as if there are no consequences to our poor food choices, often while pointing fingers at smokers for endangering our health with their second-hand exhaust.

As a result, 400,000 Americans died from poor diet and physical inactivity in 2000, a 33 percent increase over 1990.

Commendably, school districts in Spokane and Kootenai counties and elsewhere around the country are addressing this alarming epidemic. Schools are reducing lunch portions, reviewing menus to offer healthier choices and eliminating pop, candy and chips from vending machines.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy got a reluctant generation of adolescents off their duffs by encouraging schools to adopt guidelines for youth fitness that included daily vigorous exercise and testing for such physical activities as running, broad jumping, rope climbing and pull-ups. A similar commitment is needed in the schools to force today’s television tubbies to put their forks and knives down.

Some argue that school crackdowns on pop and snacks violate students’ rights to do what they want with their bodies. One Illinois 18-year-old told the Newhouse News Service: “If a student wants a caffeine high or some extra energy for P.E. or math, that should be the student’s choice. While adults may know what’s best for us most of the time, they don’t know what’s best for us all of the time.”

Oh? When it comes to food, adults working for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention know what’s best: a proper diet and exercise. Adults in the Post Falls School District know what’s best, too. When it opens today, the new River City Middle School will have “healthy” vending machines, and according to a Spokesman-Review story, junk food will be eliminated from machines at the existing middle school.

Adults who planned the Spokane Public Schools’ innovative health-club approach to physical education also know what’s best.

Generally, father — and mother — knows best for their children, too — although their expanded waistlines may reveal them as hypocrites. According to national polls, 85 percent of parents favor requiring students to take PE every day at every grade level.

To fight this 21st century battle of the bulge, elected officials and school districts must join hands to eliminate unhealthy snacks, expand PE offerings and educate children about healthy lifestyles.

Some children may saturate themselves in chocolate in protest. But, slowly, the majority of the sedentary computer age will get the message — and live long.