Irregular Army: The rise of fatties in the US military
Lynn McAfee, of the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination, is ecstatic. “I think it’s great that they finally understand our value in society,” she said. “Now they finally understand that everyone can play a part in defending our country.”
By Matt Kennard on Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 - 740 words.
Fat fighter... Retro WWF wrestler, Earthquake
Nothing is likely to put Al-Qaeda at ease more than the thought of a waddling phalanx rumbling towards them in Iraq. But as the War on Terror got underway, standards in the US military relating to body fat and fitness were seriously relaxed: as the recruiting pool has shrunk, the waistlines of soldiers has got bigger. In fact, the US soldier today weighs 37 pounds, or 25%, more than his ancestor in the Civil War.
It makes sense that the military should seek to reenfranchize the overweight. In 2005, according to an Army report, one-third of 18-year-olds who applied to the military were overweight. That share increased 6% from 1996 to 2005. The military knew that maintaining harsh policies on body fat was seriously shrinking the pool of prospective soldiers: weight is by far the most common medical reason for rejection.
The rules had to change. The military introduced ARMS, or Assessment of Recruit Motivation and Strength, that aims to give overweight soldiers a second chance physical test if they are above the body-weight limit. It grants an automatic waivers to men with 30% body fat (men) and 36% (women). Once in, these new chubby recruits are made to do various physical tests to see if they are fit enough, but their weight by itself is no longer a bar.
The Boston Globe reported on an 18-year-old who in 2006 wanted to follow in the footsteps of his father and enlist in the Marines. Problem was he was 250 pounds. That was 35 pounds over the cutoff for a Marine his height. But there was hope for him. He went to Westover Joint Air Reserve Base in Chicopee and became one of the first New Englanders to take advantage of the ARMS scheme, taking fitness tests as a way around his weight problems. Medical waivers generally are still going up. In 2007 they constituted 30% of all Army waivers and 25% of those for the Marine Corp.
***
Normally weighted soldiers who put on the pounds after they’re enlisted have also been given a reprieve. In 1998, 2,224 soldiers were discharged from the army for not meeting body fat standards. In 2006 that figure had fallen to 589-–a 74 percent drop in eight years.
“These statistics should be seen against the background of the army trying very hard to maintain its overall numbers,” said Dr. Russell Pate, professor of health sciences at the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina and a military adviser on obesity. In his opinion: “They’ve been granting waivers to the weight exclusion program in the interest of meeting targets.”
Nathan M. Banks Sr., spokesman for the Department of the Army, dismisses such charges. “Soldiers realize how important it is to stay in shape. Especially in time of war, the heat in Iraq can get up in the 100s, soldiers carry body armor that weighs over 60 pounds.”
Whatever the reason, Lynn McAfee, of the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination, is ecstatic. “I think it’s great that they finally understand our value in society,” she said. “Now they finally understand that everyone can play a part in defending our country.
“It’s absurd that as desperate as we are now for soldiers,” she continued, “even though it’s declining we’re still kicking out people of worth and people of value because of how they look. But I’d like to think this is a turning point.”
Recently $6 million of federal money was granted to the Troop Recruit Improvement (TRIM) program run by the Nutrition Research Council, which hopes to “improve recruit readiness and fitness by determining and combating the causes of childhood and adolescent obesity.”
Dr. Andrew Young, Chief of the Military Nutrition Division in Natick, Mass., was involved in constructing the TRIM project. “We definitely have seen that soldiers are not immune to the obesigenic environmental factors of this country and the rest of the world,” he said. “The military now recognizes that some of the soldiers in the army and probably other services are having trouble maintaining healthy body weight.”
Despite the decline in the numbers of discharges for obesity, Young claims obesity is rising in the army. “The environmental pressures are growing,” he said. “More and more soldiers have duties that are not as active, not all soldiers have very physically demanding jobs. Some have a relatively small physical component. The environment promotes fat gain unless we are aggressive to counteract those pressures.”
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...5 Comments
Leave a Reply
Matt Kennard
26London
Matt Kennard graduated from the Journalism School at Columbia University as a Toni Stabile Investigative scholar in 2008. He now works for the Financial Times in London. He has written for the Guardian, Salon, The Comment Factory and the Chicago Tribune, amongst others. In 2006 he won the Guardian Student Feature Writer of the Year Award
mattkennard@thecommentfactory.com
Articles by this author
-
Chavez, Morales and Correa must speak out on Iran
As I said some months ago, when I get depressed about the state of the world I’m always cheered to think of the movements in Latin America that are genuinely empowering the hitherto marginalised sections of those societies. This movement has the power to make itself felt throughout the world – but it needs to apply itself consistently. That can even take the approach of Lula who stopped short of denunciation and just put forward an offer of sanctuary in an effort to shame the Iranian regime
-
The Observer's Chomsky fetish
Chomsky is big enough to put up with this kind of rubbish, but can the Guardian or Observer, the most influential left-wing journal in the English-speaking world, really not find one journalist who doesn’t have a visceral dislike of Noam Chomsky? Sadly, but maybe predictably, for a newspaper made up of liberals pickled in the self-righteous playfields of Oxbridge liberalism, I guess they don’t
-
The fight to preserve Latin America's democratic revolution
For Prof Anderson the template of Spain after Franco’s destruction of civil society “has become the general formula of freedom: no longer making the world safe for democracy, but democracy safe for this world.” Through a confluence of historical factors, Latin America is the crucible where the last chance to make a world safe for democracy is being fought. The importance of this battle shouldn’t be underestimated: if it fails, we might not get another chance
-
Jan Nederveen Pieterse on Globalization and Empire
The fundamentals of American weakness are its shrinking share of world manufacturing, its gargantuan consumption, low savings rate, faulty policies (massive military spending, massive war spending, deep tax cuts) and gigantic financial deficits. Some problems are structural (high American health care costs are a function of lack of restraint on pharmaceutical industries and reflect the large influence of business interests); this prompts outsourcing, which further weakens the American economy. The military interventions are destabilizing (increase risks for others) and costly (adding to American economic problems) and erode American legitimacy. So the problems are not merely overstretch
-
Massive Attack on influences, war and the cult of fame
I think a lot of it is damaging and I feel there has to be at some point a change in the way we deal with different peoples situations and development. I hate double standards more than anything – I hate the current row over Iran’s nuclear ambitions and whether they should be allowed to have nuclear technology or even nuclear energy. It seems to me that our history is littered with hypocrisy and I find that quite hard to live with being a British citizen
-
Matt Kennard on Russia Today extended: 'US Army sent 'hardcore' neo-Nazi troops to Iraq and Afghanistan'
Under the Bush administration, the U.S. military allegedly started to recruit neo-Nazis and gang members to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq. Investigative journalist Matt Kennard talks to RT about his researh into these allegations and other problems in the US military.
-
Tony Benn on the EU, Cuba and Islam
Well I don’t think it helps to go around saying, “Try Blair for war crimes,” if you’re trying to persuade Labour MPs to vote against the war and they are told they’ve got to arrest and see Blair and Cherie locked up. It’s ridiculous. I said this to all the people… I mean it’s mad… I can understand peoples anger, but it is crazy
-
Hilary Benn on aid, the US, Iraq, and Tony Blair
The truth is: The real answer to the question why did we take the decision that we did, is because on the 18th March 2003 a majority of the House of Commons voted to do it
-
Johann Hari on Chomsky, Hitchens, Iraq, and anarchism
But I think Hitchens arguments are so well put and one should engage with them and take them at face value. He says Saddam was intermeshed increasingly with Islam. Zarquawi, for example, was already in Iraq before the war. I don’t agree with his argument on that. Ba’athism and Islamism are different things, and should be opposed for different reasons
-
Polly Toynbee on Iraq and New Labour
No I think it’s very difficult to navigate because for one thing even if you more want to bring democracy to the Middle East more than you want to take the oil – which I think probably is the case now – but such is the fear of fundamentalism that you wonder if you knock over the Saudi’s who takes over? Is it even stronger Wahhabist, and is that even more dangerous, and even less democratic? It’s very difficult
-
Noam Chomsky on the US Empire and hopes and prospects
They hope that China will organize a coalition of peace loving states to stop the militarism and aggressiveness headed by the US and its British ally. Well it's interesting that they have such contempt for American democracy and British democracy: they don't even dream of it coming from within. I don't agree with it - I don't think we have to wait for China to save us from all doom - I think we can do it ourselves
-
Professor Michael Mann on America's incoherent empire
The most you can have is a kind of informal imperialism where the state remains sovereign - you don’t try to interfere in it but you limit its options. This is what, typically, the US has done in Latin America when it is not intervening. The US is formidable. People contrast so-called multilateralism to unilateralist and they think of the United Nations. The US runs the UN and had run the UN for most of the 1990s and that’s what the US can do because the US provides certain resources that no-one else can provide. Nothing much is going to happen in the way of international activity unless the US is part of it and leading it and that’s what the US can return to again. What I think it cannot do is to reconstruct foreign countries on its own without having considerable local support
making fat of 'fatties' is kind of a low-brow thing. i would expect the righties to do that…tsk
Great article man, and great title. The first line "Nothing is likely to put Al-Qaeda at ease more than the thought of a waddling phalanx rumbling towards them in Iraq" is priceless.
HAHAHA,
Great Article, Al Queda, Fat People in the Army, Love it! America is going south in more ways than one. Deep Fry Everything!!
The demographic has an increasing numerical value of obese people anyways, its not like this should be some sort of surprise given the selection pool.
If an individual cannot meet minimum weight standards (BMI measurement test) this does not necessarily mean they are not fit for duty.
Nothing is more comical then being told you are overweight, yet earning a PFT badge while being several pounds over the limit, and being flagged. I am not saying we should include the Kool-Aid man in our recruit movements, but its not like the BMI system the Army uses has worked at any point in time anyways.
I went in 25 lbs over the limit, lost it all @ basic, but had to push myself extremely hard to maintain the standard, and sometimes I would slip. For my height 179lbs was allowed, I would regularly dip into the low 180's, and had done as described above, earned a PFT badge, while being on the overweight program.
Before making blanket statements about recruits being "tubbeh", look at the standardization used to assess said "tubbehness". Its a joke.
"Hey Corporal you're on the overweight program, but nice 290 on your PT Test!"
LOL