Maybe the Army should have spent less time studying "white rage" and more time doing sit-ups.
New research studied all Active Duty service members in the Army (about 480,000 people) from February 2019 to June 2021 – not even the entire length of the pandemic and lockdowns – and found that the Army was getting fat at a concerning pace.
The researchers excluded female soldiers who got pregnant or other soldiers who had incomplete health records, leaving a little less than half, or 200,000 soldiers, in their study for the final results.
Of the cohort of nearly 200,000 soldiers who remained, the researchers found that nearly 27% who were healthy before the pandemic became overweight. And nearly 16% of those who were previously overweight became obese. Before the pandemic, about 18% of the soldiers were obese; by 2021, it grew to 23%.
Let me sum that up:
- Over a quarter of all fit soldiers in the U.S. Army became overweight in a year
- Nearly a quarter of all soldiers in this massive sample size were not just overweight, but obese.
The same trend was seen in the Marines and Navy.
This fatness isn't just costing America fighting readiness, but real resources. ZeroHedge notes:
According to federal research, fat people cost the military more than 650,000 workdays each year, while obesity-related healthcare exceeds $1.5 billion each year for current and former service members and their families.
In the last year, the Army also missed its recruitment goals for the first time ever, and by 25%.
75% of all potential recruits aged 17 to 24 were disqualified, including 10% for obesity.
