Reducing "globesity" begins at home.

• Author: Pennybacker, Mindy
• Position: GREEN GUIDANCE - Weight

Sixty-four percent of Americans are overweight or obese, but the rest of the world is gaining fast. French women do get fat, despite Mireille Guiliano's best-selling book that claims the opposite; 42 percent of the French are far from fashionably slim. In China, meanwhile, 20 percent of women and 15 percent of men are overweight. No wonder the World Health Organization (WHO) calls this epidemic "globesity."

Perhaps most alarming is the rapid gain seen in children. Today, over 15 percent of U.S. children 6-11 years old are overweight, compared with 4 percent in the 1960s. In France, numbers of heavy-to-obese children are growing at 17 percent a year, versus 6 percent for adults. This puts the young at risk of weight-related cardiovascular disease, higher cholesterol and blood pressure, and type 2 ("adult onset") diabetes.

The response is simple, but not always easy: we need to burn at least as many calories as we take in. The two main obstacles, as documented by Eric Schlosser in Fast Food Nation and Greg Critser in Fatlands, are a sedentary lifestyle--encouraged by television, car dependence, and lack of safe spaces for exercising--and cheap, fast, and highly processed foods, which are rich in fats and refined sugars. (And the hub of an agribusiness system that also despoils our environment: fast food's demand for uniform French fries has spurred the monocropping of a single variety of potato, heavy on pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, and factory chicken, hog, and beef farms pollute our waterways with manure.)

The good news is that people are taking action. Globesity-defeating steps include the following:

Eat lots of produce. Fall is the harvest season, so shop at farm stands and farmers markets for plentiful, affordable fresh fruits and vegetables. Produce is low-calorie and high in vitamins and fiber, which is filling and discourages overeating. A new French government initiative promotes 5-10 servings of produce a day. Environmental plus: you support farmers and help save farmland, and local foods require less pesticides and less fossil fuel for transport. Choose organic to help keep soil fertile, protect watersheds, preserve habitat, and avoid genetically engineered foods.

Eat whole foods and drinks. U.S. nutritional guidelines recommend at least 85 grams a day of fiber-rich whole grains--typically absent from white bread, potato chips, and other refined carbohydrates. Processed cakes, cookies, and fried foods are high in...