Imagine this. It's 2086. An earnest young graduate student in anthropology turns on his camera, and turns to the stooped, white-haired gentleman sitting across from him.

"Tell me more about this game 'tag' -- how was it played exactly?"

I'd like someone to launch a well-funded public service campaign to take on one of the less-recognized threats to a healthy pregnancy and healthy infancy. "Pregnancy: More Joy, Less Guilt." "Guilt: Bad for Moms, Bad for Babies." Any deep-pocket volunteers?

Six years ago, Congress authorized the National Children's Study, an ambitious plan to follow 100,000 children from before birth to the age of 21. It's intended to provide high-quality longitudinal data on how environmental factors affect children's health and development, and to look at why conditions like asthma, autism, obesity, and childhood cancers are on the rise.

"Most of you probably have seen the print ads or commercials for Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty. I think what they are trying to do is great,
and, unfortunately, necessary. "

This is from my daughter-in-law, who treats people with eating disorders in a center outside Chicago.

The first study to actually measure fitness levels in a representative sample of Americans is out, published in JAMA today. And there's no more room for denial: based on the results, about 20 percent of Americans aged 12 to 49 are out of shape and at greater risk of disease and early death. That's about 16 million people.