If all goes according to plan, kids will spend more time playing outside and less time watching TV.

RODALE NEWS, WASHINGTON, DC—After months of promoting her Let's Move program, the first lady upped the ante yesterday at a news conference which unveiled her Childhood Obesity Action Plan. And if the 70 recommendations that sum it up go into effect in the next 20 years, as the plan suggests, no one living today will recognize the America of 2030.

Sound ambitious? Until you read the Childhood Obesity Action Plan's 124 pages you have no concept of how ambitious it is—or how difficult it will be to achieve unless everyone participates. That means parents and teachers, foundations, and local governments, as well as the federal government. Everyone.

THE DETAILS: The proposals, issued by a task force led by White House domestic policy adviser Melody Barnes, are designed to conquer the childhood-obesity epidemic in a generation. The plan's goals for 2030 are to have 95 percent of children at normal weight. Those same children will be crowding sidewalks at 7:30 in the morning, walking or riding their bikes to school after a breakfast of Cheerios instead of Sugar Frosted Flakes, because the advertising on children’s television programs reminded them of how much more nutritious, not to mention, tasty, they are. They will be playing outside when they finish their homework, and television watching will be a sometimes event.

Communities not served by permanent grocery stores will get their fresh fruits and vegetables from mobile grocery stores or from community gardens. Everyone will read the nutrition labels on food before buying it. Soft drinks, french fries, and doughnuts, banned from schools, will be occasional treats. And recess will be a requirement, not a privilege.

Some of these efforts may not cost any additional money, but many will. But at the news conference, the government officials seemed convinced they can make it happen. And they have some advantages that have not existed in the past, including a recognition in this country that something must be done about the childhood-obesity crisis, along with an enormously popular first lady who has used her bully pulpit for her crusade. Without her frequent appearances to remind people of what’s at stake, it is unlikely that so many food and beverage companies would be so interested right now in telling the public about their good works to improve the nutritional quality of their food. Instead, the topic is everywhere: in advertisements, on magazine covers, on television.

WHAT IT MEANS: Maybe big problems call for big solutions. At the same time, the first lady's team acknowledges the barriers. In a burst of candor about the difficulty of getting companies to stop advertising sugary, fatty, salty foods on television—a candor seldom seen at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)—the FTC chairman, Jon Liebowitz, said: “The regulatory approach is not where we want to start,” in part because he seems to feel that working cooperatively with the food advertisers and getting them to self-regulate will work better. (It hasn’t in the past, but times are different now.) And in part because Congress took away the agency’s food advertising regulatory powers years ago. But perhaps this commissioner will ask for them back.