When I was little, kids didn’t get the food choices they get now. Parents and schools spooned it onto the plate and that was it—take it or leave it. For the most part, I took it. But my stomach instinctively rebelled at one staple of the school diet: the unidentifiable meat.

Oh, the lunch ladies could tell me it was beef, chicken, or fish. But if it came in a pressed patty that I couldn’t readily identify as beef, chicken, or fish, forget it. My stomach would not accept it no matter how carefully it was disguised by sauces, gravies, cheese, or buns. So I missed a lot of post-lunch recesses while lunchroom aides forced me to sit glumly at the table and keep poking at the blob with my fork before finally letting me go.

Maybe I should have been schooling them.

Fast-forward to adulthood. I still can’t eat unidentifiable meat, but apparently it’s become an unhealthy mainstay of Western diets—think: chicken nuggets—and one reason Westerners are becoming more obese. And the obesity epidemic in the West is why children here now have shorter life expectancies than their parents.

The only way to change the trend is to change our diets and lifestyles. But change isn’t easy—as Chef Jamie Oliver has found during his long crusade to modify the eating habits of his fellow Britons and we processed-food lovers in the United States. His recent efforts in West Virginia were chronicled in the ABC television series, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution—an eye-opening look at American dietary habits, especially if you have school-age children … or a taste for unidentifiable meat.

Here are a few thoughts on the challenge of change:

“The only practice that’s now constant is the practice of constantly accommodating to change.”

—William McGovern, businessman

“Changes are not only possible and predictable, but to deny them is to be an accomplice to one’s own unnecessary vegetation.”

—Gail Sheehy, author

“It’s not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change.”

—Charles Darwin, naturalist

“Change before you have to.”

—Jack Welch, businessman

“If you can’t change your fate, change your attitude.”

—Amy Tan, author

“Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.”

—James Baldwin, author

“The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.”

—Nathaniel Branden, psychologist

“Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better.”

—Richard Hooker, theologian