Clinton Targets Childhood Obesity

When Bill Clinton called the White House home, he put away plenty of burgers and barbecue. But since his serious heart scare last year, the former president says he's changed his ways.

And now he wants to help kids see the light, too, by declaring war on childhood obesity.

Mr. Clinton was more like the average American than he'd like to admit - a cigar-smoking, super-sizing, friend of all things fried, observes CBS News Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi.

"You loved all food from the South?" she asked Mr. Clinton.

"Oh, my God, I do. I love it all"

"Barbecue?'

"Barbecue."

"Pie?"

"Pie."

"Fried chicken?"

"Absolutely."

"Ice cream?"

"Yeah."

And, famously, Big Macs?"

"I like it all. I love all that stuff"

He seems an unlikely candidate to kick off a health initiative, Alfonsi notes.

"Is it true you've sworn off all junk food?"

"Yes, I don't eat junk food."

"At all?"

"At all."

"Ever?"

"Ever. I don't think I've had any junk food since my surgery."

That was in September, when the former president underwent a quadruple bypass operation. Since then, he says, he's dropped 15 pounds and gained a new appreciation of the country's obesity epidemic.

But is it a cause really worthy of a former president?

"I'm working on tsunami relief, I'm working on AIDS, but cardiovascular disease is the No. 1 killer in America."So, Tuesday, at an elementary school in Manhattan, Mr. Clinton announced the launch of a nationwide, 10-year initiative to combat childhood obesity.

"I was very overweight when I was a young child," he told students. "When I was 15, I weighed 210 pounds."

The initiative will focus on changing school lunches, removing junk from school vending machines, and getting parents to put the brakes on fast food.

"We can change this over the next few years," Mr. Clinton asserts.

"How in the world," Alfonsi asked Mr. Clinton, "do you stop that busy mother, who has a minivan full of kids, from going through the drive-through at McDonald's?"

"You don't," he replied. "But even they could cook the French fries in a healthier way."

And that, Alfonsi points out, could seriously reshape the country's kids.

The former president wants to encourage kids to make healthy food choices, something he admits was hard for him to do, even when he was the most powerful man in the world.

"Even in the years I was running 20-25 miles a week, I wasn't overweight, but I was still clogging arteries.

"Do you feel you set bad example?"

"Yeah, but I don't think I was aware of it. I thought I was setting a good example, because I was running every day."

"Running to McDonald's?"

"Yeah, running to McDonalds," Mr. Clinton laughed.

Less than 8 percent of America's schools offer any kind of daily physical education classes. The initiative aims to reverse that trend as well, Alfonsi adds.

And joining Mr. Clinton on the crusade is Arkansas' current governor, Mike Huckabee, who lost 110 pounds while in office after he was diagnosed with diabetes.