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LITTLE ROCK—Former President Clinton said Wednesday that trying to reverse the epidemic of childhood obesity is a daunting challenge that rivals his foundation’s efforts to lower the price of anti-AIDS drugs in Africa and other parts of the developing world.

“What we’re trying to do here is harder because we’re trying to change the culture of a country and it’s like trying to turn the Titanic around before it hits the iceberg,” Clinton said at a ceremony honoring schools for their health programs.

Honoring 43 schools for their efforts to battle childhood obesity, Clinton said such programs are needed even more because of rising food and energy prices.

“Families feel constrained to buy cheaper food that fills you up, has more calories, fat and salt and fewer nutrients but it gets you from one meal to the next,” Clinton said. “We have to be very careful that the same thing doesn’t happen to schools who are facing the exact same economic constraints that families are facing.”

Clinton recognized schools from a dozen states during a ceremony Wednesday at his presidential library in Little Rock. The schools are being recognized for their participation in the Healthy Schools Program, a joint initiative of the William J. Clinton Foundation and the American Heart Association.

The program is supported by funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which has committed $28 million to the effort.

The schools being honored include Kenly Elementary School in Tampa, Fla., which banished candy from its building. Students at the school also used tires and logs to build an obstacle course to tackle between classes.

At the Pine Hill Middle School in New Jersey, students are offered a fitness club and the staff does yoga twice a week.

Arkansas’ Forrest City Junior High School was recognized for its efforts, which include a program that combines after-school tutoring with physical activity. The school received a grant that pays high school students to tutor middle school students for an hour, provided the students donate a half-hour of their time to leading the younger students in recreation activities.

At Trix Elementary in Detroit, students have planted a garden in the school’s greenhouse and use the produce to serve in the school cafeteria’s salad bar. Clinton praised the idea of serving locally grown produce as a way to not only improve students’ health but as a way to cut down on global warming from transporting food over long distances.

“One of the best things I think you can do is for every school, including those in urban areas, to have a garden,” he said. “Even if you have to put dirt up on the roof of one of your buildings to get it done, or break up some of the asphalt. We need people to learn again about how food is grown, and how it goes from the ground to the table.”

Clinton complained that American society moved away from a notion that dates back to ancient Greece, that physical and intellectual activity were both linked to a young person’s education.