One out of three young adults is overweight or obese in the United States. It’s a health epidemic now on the radar of the U.S. Military.
“Since the military tends to recruit from that population, the 17- to 24-year-olds, it's starting to impact our recruitment pool,” said Major Kayla Ramotar, Command Dietician at the Center for Initial Military Training.
“The percent of overweight soldiers is about 8 to 10% typically and that's a problem for the military.” Retired Lt. General Thomas Spoehr insists while America’s obesity problem is not as drastic among U.S. troops, it is still weighing them down.
Spoehr said it’s a national security problem. “This is part of a trend that if it continues we will be unable to recruit the number of people we need for our military.”
The Army recently deployed a new exam called the Occupational Physical Assessment test or OPAT. It’s administered before a recruit ships out to basic training and measures their physical fitness.
“We had a significant increase in multiple skeletal injuries and folks that weren't able to actually execute some of the physical demands of certain types of professions,” said Ramotar.
The OPAT is in addition to the Army’s minimum physical standards.
“We require the American military to be fit,” said Ramotar. “It's one of the qualities that we value so we could talk about lowering the standards but we wouldn't like the military that would emerge from lower standards.”
But they acknowledge more needs to be done to combat the problem.
“This is not just a military problem,” said Spoehr. “This is a reflection of American society as a whole so it's something we're going to have to deal with.”