Overweight Soldiers Booted; Rates of Obese Soldiers Dismissed from Service Increasing
The U.S. Army is turning away new recruits and kicking out seasoned soldiers for being too fat to fight.
Within the first 10 months of 2012, the Army dismissed 1,625 soldiers from active duty for not being able to meet fitness standards.
Obesity has become a growing problem for the Army as the number of active-duty military personnel deemed overweight or obese more than tripled between 1998 and 2010, according to the Washington Post. This year's figure of 1,625 is also 15 times bigger than the soldiers discharged in 2007 for the same reason.
"A healthy and fit force is essential to national security," said Pentagon spokesperson Commander Leslie Hull-Ryde to the Post. "Our service members must be physically prepared to deploy on a moment's notice anywhere on the globe to extremely austere and demanding conditions."
It appears that America's obesity problem now applies to all citizens, even those in physically demanding lines of work.
The Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center finds the number of overweight service members has led to a national security concern as more people are failing to achieve the proper weight for a fit military force.
Military officials are trying to deal with the problem which has led to a re-examination of the training programs currently put in place.
Soldiers are expected to maintain a certain weight based on their height, but if they exceed the designated amount they have their Body Mass Index tested to see if they are under the allowable limit. The Army BMI limit for men is 18 percent and 26 percent for women, as per military regulations.
The other part of the fitness requirements is a physical endurance test that involves performing a number of sit-ups, push-ups and a run time associated with the soldier's age.
