With the reintroduction of the Presidential Fitness Test, the Trump administration has taken a bold and effective step to address obesity, one of the most pressing health and economic challenges of our time. While the United Nations was preparing the Fourth High-Level Meeting (HLM4) on non-communicable diseases, pushing increasingly ideological and prescriptive measures such as global taxes, advertising restrictions, and warning labels, Trump was making concrete and pragmatic choices on the domestic front.

From bans to action

Trump rejected the now worn-out path of sugar and saturated fat taxes, alarmist labels like the Nutri-Score, advertising bans, and consumption restrictions. Nor did he adopt the ideological paradigm promoted by the WHO and several European countries: an approach with questionable results and often serious unintended consequences for society and the economy.

He demonstrated that he understood what is often overlooked: obesity is a complex and multifaceted problem, which cannot be solved by targeting a single food, but rather by addressing lifestyle as a whole.

The return of the presidential fitness test

It is official: the Presidential Fitness Test will return to American public schools after more than a decade. The president signed an executive order to reinstate a program launched in 1956 and abandoned in 2012, bringing back physical tests such as the mile run, pull-ups, push-ups, and the sit-and-reach into schools.

The new President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition, made up of athletes and popular spokespersons, will be tasked with promoting a culture of movement, performance, and personal responsibility, starting from the youngest.

Obesity: a problem of balance and sedentariness

It is a concrete and symbolic choice at the same time. Instead of imposing punitive rules or stigmatizing those who eat “badly” (without putting them in the cultural and economic conditions to access quality food), the goal is to empower citizens, involving them in building their own well-being.

Taxes, bans, and the Nutri-Score have already proven ineffective: in many countries where they have been applied, obesity continues to rise. In fact, these measures often generate side effects: they penalize the weakest groups, distort markets, create distrust in institutions, and do not truly educate toward change.

Active health: the power of personal responsibility

The reintroduction of the presidential test represents a return to an integral vision of health, which does not limit itself to saying what cannot be eaten, but actively promotes what can be done to feel better.

Trump, in this case, managed to interpret the heart of the problem better than many technocrats: individual responsibility, movement, physical education, and awareness, not impositions or fear.

More movement, less ideology

Is it the solution to the problem of obesity? No, certainly not. Especially in the United States, where 75% of the population is obese or overweight. The initiative focuses solely on physical activity and does not introduce the principle of balance, central to the Mediterranean diet’s culture.

But it is a concrete, disruptive gesture that counters years of failed health ideology. It finally shifts the focus from what we eat to what we don’t burn. Because in the society of abundance, the problem of obesity is not only the excess of available calories, but above all, the drastic drop in energy expenditure.

Reintroducing physical movement, starting from school, is a step in the right direction. And it is worth much more than many ideological proclamations.

Article published in Italian on Eunews

Read A global call for a smarter, science-based strategy on obesity and NCDs>>>