A well-rounded education.(have you heard?)

Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that obesity in kids ages 6 to 19 has tripled in the last two decades. American kids aren't just getting fatter; they're getting sicker because they're overweight. A 2002 review of child-obesity studies, published in the British journal The Lancet, found that obesity in childhood causes serious medical conditions more often associated with adults, such as type 2 diabetes and hypertension.

Eating too much of the wrong kinds of foods is clearly a major cause of these problems. (See our cover stop, "Cut the Fat," page 12.) Yet soft-drink manufacturers and junk-food vendors are being allowed to target schools as a way to capture the minds, money, and mouths of young shoppers. Corporate involvement has its place in education. But there's a big difference between donating computers for philanthropic reasons and signing "pouring contracts," for example, in which companies agree to pay tens of thousands of dollars for the exclusive right to stock vending machines and sell ...