Yet when the French school year begins this fall, more than 7,000 students will find themselves the volunteers in an experiment to improve awareness about health and physical fitness — and which coincides with official concerns about rising obesity rates in France.

The project, baptized “Morning Classes, Afternoon Sports,” and taking effect in 124 middle and high schools across the country and in overseas departments, was devised as an antidote to school violence and absenteeism and as a way to help students develop team-building skills, according to Luc Chatel, the French education minister.

But the program’s other inevitable benefits are consistent with recommendations by a panel of health experts commissioned in 2009 by President Nicolas Sarkozy to devise a plan for addressing rising obesity in France.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/france/100827/obesity-france-paris-food