A new report has confirmed what visual evidence has suggested for some time now: Tooele County is the fattest county in Utah.

Last week, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute released their nationwide 2010 County Health Rankings report showing that 29 percent of adults in Tooele County are obese — the highest percentage in the state. And that percentage skyrockets to 61.9 percent when factoring in overweight adults, according to 2008 data from the state Department of Health.

Clearly, as a county, we’ve let ourselves go. But this is not just a problem of vanity. Obesity, with all its attendant health problems, is a killer. And it’s increasingly a killer that we’re passing on to our children through poor health habits.

It’s time for all of us — government officials, schools, parents and businesses — to declare war on obesity. A good place to start would be with a battle against soda pop.

The average American consumes 50 gallons of carbonated soft drinks a year — the No. 1 source of refined sugar in our national diet. We’d venture to guess our local per capita consumption is considerably higher. On any given morning, you can find legions of commuters filling up 44-ounce cups of soda at numerous convenience stores in the valley. Pop, by the pallet, is stocked front and center at Tooele’s Wal-Mart. Kids buy it in their schools and families serve it at dinner.

But soda pop is all calories and no nutrition. In fact, nationally there is a debate about treating soda more like tobacco by placing warning labels on it, launching public marketing campaigns to inform consumers of the dangers of overconsumption, and possibly applying a “sin tax” to such beverages to reduce consumption and fund health programs. A new nationwide childhood obesity campaign being led by First Lady Michelle Obama is also putting these beverages squarely in the crosshairs.

On the local level, however, soda pop remains culturally entrenched.

Despite a November 2009 online poll showing only 44 percent of Transcript-Bulletin readers wanted vending machines in public schools, the Tooele County School District continues to sell soda pop and candy to kids, defending the practice by saying vending machine revenues are a vital source of school fundraising. However, we say at the point at which our county has the worst obesity problem in the state, it’s time to question whether fundraising should be a higher priority than setting the right example for children.

The Tooele County Health Department, which is charged with combating obesity locally, actually has a soda fountain similar to those found in convenience stores available for employee use inside the health department building. Perhaps a good way to kick off the county’s new anti-obesity public outreach campaign would be to ceremonially toss that soda machine into the dumpster out back.

In spite of the poor example being set by our schools and health officials, the worst example continues to be set by local parents. Too many of us have continued to stock and serve soda pop to our families as if it were water, even as we ourselves have piled on the pounds. It’s now up to all of us to return soda pop to the place it held in our diets 30 years ago, when portions were modest and the beverage was considered a treat, not a daily staple.