Obese Children a National Security Threat?

When college professors complain that a large percentage of students coming out of high school don't have the critical thinking and language skills to succeed in college English we don't say that that's a threat to the national education system.

Her statement was a little hyperbolic, but hardly objectionable or inaccurate.

And from military leaders who tell us that when more than one in four young people are unqualified for military service because of their weight, childhood obesity isn’t just a public health threat, it’s not just an economic threat, it’s a national security threat as well.

The Army, which has met its manpower goals every year since 1990, has fallen behind in 2005. Through the first five months of a budget year that begins in October, the Army is about six percent behind schedule toward fulfilling this year’s goal.

The Army National Guard is having even greater difficulty. The Guard wanted to recruit 63,000 new members this year, in part to make up for a shortfall in 2004. However, four months into the budget year, by the end of January, it had signed up only 12,800 men and women, 24 percent below its target.

The Marine Corps failed to meet its recruiting goal for the second straight month in February, the first time it has fallen short for two successive months in more than a decade. The Marines missed their February objective by some 6.5 percent. A spokesman for the Marine Corps Recruiting Command told a journalist, “It is a challenging recruiting environment right now.”

I dunno, a shortage of qualified new military recruits is one of the arguments I've seen re: DADT -- that they are having a hard time finding people and so opening it up to gay and lesbian people would help a lot.

edit, found this for example:

Quote:

The Army, which has met its manpower goals every year since 1990, has fallen behind in 2005. Through the first five months of a budget year that begins in October, the Army is about six percent behind schedule toward fulfilling this year’s goal.

I'm pretty confident that's not because of all the fatties out there. It's because there are a couple of wars going on, and would-be recruits are smart enough to figure out that, if they sign up for military service, they might get sent to fight in one of those wars.

I would add, however, that recessions generally boost enlistment, so I'd be interested in seeing more recent numbers.

And up to 9 million Americans ages 17 to 24 -- or nearly 27 percent of the prime military recruiting age demographic -- are "too fat to serve in the military," according to an April study from Mission: Readiness, a non-profit group composed of senior retired military officials. The report cited obesity as the leading medical reason for candidates being deferred from the service, calling the epidemic "a potential threat to our national security."

According to the study, more than 140,000 individuals failed their military entrance physicals between 1995 and 2008 because of weight problems -- a 70 percent increase over that same period.

Through his military career, Seip has seen the nation's obesity numbers boom: In 1990, no state had an obesity rate of more than 15 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control. But by 2009, only two areas -- Colorado and the District of Columbia -- boasted an obesity rate of less than 20 percent, while 33 states had rates greater than 25 percent and nine more had an obesity prevalence beyond 30 percent.

"It's taken us years to get to where we are [with the obesity epidemic], and it's gonna take years to get us back [to normal]," Siep said.

And with the military annually discharging more than 1,200 first-time enlistees before their contract expirations because of weight problems, according to the report, obesity imposes a hefty $60 million price tag for the military to recruit and train replacements.