There is a TED talk about obesity being a national security problem for the US

Discussion in 'Warfare / Military' started by cirdellin, Jul 15, 2020.

  1. Kranes56

    Kranes56 Banned

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    I think it’s a little ironic that the people who are complaining about obesity being a security problem are the same people who didn’t like Michelle Obama’s campaign for better school lunches. But that’s just me.

    This isn’t a new problem. Heck I think there’s a story about Canada making war plans against the US in the 1920s. They commented on how the average American was overweight and lazy then too.
     
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  2. Moonglow

    Moonglow Well-Known Member

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    I was in the army from 1982-1986 and and hurt feelings had letters written to congressmen and family...
     
  3. cirdellin

    cirdellin Banned

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    I can’t even begin to explain how much I agree with you.
     
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  4. ArmySoldier

    ArmySoldier Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Not sure I get your statement here. Were you the one writing hurt feelings letters? Did someone write them on your behalf?
     
  5. Moonglow

    Moonglow Well-Known Member

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    I said, that people back then were writing letters because they thought they were not treated right while in the army..It is nothing new, those are the guys that used to get the beatings right before graduation from basic because they failed..
    Basic training to me was easier that a dozen years in school athletics playing football, baseball, wrestling and track.
     
    Last edited: Jul 17, 2020
  6. ArmySoldier

    ArmySoldier Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Well that went way over your head.

    I guess we won't bring up IU closures and unit restrictions seeing as though it's been since '86 since you've worn a uniform.
     
  7. Moonglow

    Moonglow Well-Known Member

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    They used to let overweight people in and make them lose the weigh during basic..
     
  8. ArmySoldier

    ArmySoldier Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Still do...

    There's a fatty camp at every basic/OSUT station if they can't even meet min requirements. If they fail that portion, they are entry level separated.
     
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  9. ArmySoldier

    ArmySoldier Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Do you know how long an overweight PT failure can remain on profile?
     
  10. ArmySoldier

    ArmySoldier Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Guessing by your silence that you do not know how long an overweight PT failure can remain on profile. Which begs the question: "Why are you in this thread?".
     
  11. LoneStarGal

    LoneStarGal Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yeah, that was good. M. Obama's school lunches were so "good" that kids refused to eat. Starvation - America's best weight loss diet. LOL

    upload_2020-7-17_12-13-59.png
     
  12. Kranes56

    Kranes56 Banned

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    Ladies and gentlemen, watch as my point got proven. Healthy stuff doesn’t taste as good because tongue. But it doesn’t mean much. So either 1.)obesity is a national security issue and it needs to be dealt with (via healthy diets via school sponsored lunches.), or 2.) it’s not a national security issue which defeats the point of this thread.

    Either way? Eat your veggies kids.
     
  13. LoneStarGal

    LoneStarGal Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Obesity can (and is) a national security issue. Obama's school lunch program was disgusting.

    Both of the above statements can be true.

    Yummy!


    upload_2020-7-17_13-3-30.png
     
  14. Kranes56

    Kranes56 Banned

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    So nothing. You have nothing.

    You forget, I was a student in high school during the Obama years. The nastiest thing I had was the sweet carrot fries. And even then those weren’t bad.
     
  15. Nightmare515

    Nightmare515 Ragin' Cajun Staff Member Past Donor

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    Incentives and quality of life in the military are 2 factors that have way more to do with recruiting issues than being overweight. I've read the reports too, roughly 71% of kids 17-24 are ineligible for service due to criminal records, no high school diploma, and/or obesity. The obesity thing comes with an asterisk though because the military has "fat camps" it'll send a qualified recruit to prior to basic training if they meet the other requirements for enlistment.

    Times are changing and the culture of today's youth has changed as well. The military isn't seen as an "adventurous" endeavor as much as it was when we were kids. In the eyes of a lot of kids the military seems like a last resort and/or something you have to "endure" rather than a career you will enjoy. Plus with the military obviously comes discipline, this is a generation that largely grew up calling adults by their first names and telling their own parents to go **** themselves...As an 18 year old kid going into a career where others will yell at you and tell you what to do isn't exactly appealing for many of them.

    Plus being at war for the past 20 years hasn't helped the perception of the military either. This isn't the military of the 80s and 90s to where it was more like a normal(ish) job with a few field exercises sprinkled in there every once and awhile. Back and forth to deployments and training exercises for deployments constantly throughout your entire career isn't exactly a positive in the recruiting brochure. Kids today grew up with social media and networking and nobody considering joining the military today is "unsure" of what the military actually is today. "We're going to take a significant portion of your entire adult life but we'll give you free healthcare" isn't a very easy sell to the more rebellious generation of kids born in the late 90s and early 2000's.

    In layman's terms, a lot of kids today don't believe they should have to work AT ALL and the world should be like Star Trek society where money doesn't exist and you can just live and be "happy". Good luck trying to recruit those types of people into a system to where they will get told to be respectful and sit down and shut up and that no their opinion actually doesn't matter when they first show up.

    We can fix fat people, we can't fix that sort of mentality.
     
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  16. Nightmare515

    Nightmare515 Ragin' Cajun Staff Member Past Donor

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    Diet is one thing, the mentality of kids today is a whole other ballgame. Kids live in their rooms on their Playstations nowadays eating pringles and sodas. A couple years ago I lived on a nice river that ran through my neighborhood. I had a little boat that I kept out back and I would go fishing almost every day after work and on the weekends. Throughout my entire time living there I never ONCE saw ANYBODY ELSE on that river behind our houses, it was my own private river basically. There were plenty of kids of all ages in the neighborhood, I'd see them at the bus stop on my way to work every morning but I never saw a single kid outside of their house doing ANYTHING. My own next door neighbor was a good friend of mine and we'd sit outside drinking on the porch pretty often. It wasn't until a year and a half after I lived there that I learned he had a teenage son who just happened to stumble outside and ask his dad for something. The kid had been there for the entire time I lived next door and I never even knew he existed because he never leaves the house. Him or any other kids in that neighborhood.

    I never saw kids riding bikes, playing football, running around, etc. The only time I ever saw kids outside was during winter when the parents had some of them shoveling the driveways but besides that, never. Parents take small children to play in parks and whatnot but once kids reach school age and discover cell phones and video games then they turn into ghosts.

    Punishment in our day meant being confined to your room. Punishment nowadays would mean dragging the kid out of their room and tossing them outside and making them do SOMETHING.

    That's way more of a problem than some nasty boiled fish and bread lunch in school. Prisoners eat better than that. We wouldn't have to try to starve kids with school lunch if kids actually went outside and skinned a knee like kids are supposed to do.
     
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  17. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    "New U.S. Military Study: Soldiers Shed Body Fat With the Keto Diet"

    https://perfectketo.com/study-military-keto-diet/

    "Traditionally, the military adheres to standard U.S. dietary recommendations, meaning soldiers typically eat low-fat, high-carb diets."

    "The United States military is no exception — more than 60% of military personnel are overweight or obese[*]. As a result, the CDC recently declared that “obesity is impacting national security”[*]."

    "The keto diet group lost an average of 17 pounds during the twelve-week study period, decreasing their average body fat percentage by 5.1%
    Their visceral fat, which is associated with increased inflammation and risk of heart disease, fell by an average of 43.7%
    Their insulin sensitivity improved 48% on average"
     
    Last edited: Jul 18, 2020
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  18. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    the Military is learning that low-fat, high-carb diets are not the best diets, this was a failed experiment and many Americans suffered from the bad science of Ancel Keys
     
    Last edited: Jul 18, 2020
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  19. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Obama tried, be the corps stopped her and became a move more, eat less push mainly again

    [​IMG]
     
  20. cirdellin

    cirdellin Banned

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    Everyone should have at least 50 grams of protein per day. Plus 15 mL of omega three fats. Carbs should match physical demands. That is true of everyone.
     
  21. Nightmare515

    Nightmare515 Ragin' Cajun Staff Member Past Donor

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    The military is not going to implement a keto diet, I 100% guarantee you that.

    Plus military chow halls have come a long way and are actually pretty damn good nowadays. There's a wide variety of choices with the standard meal, short order, sub stations, tons of extra's etc. Plus keto screws with people differently causing some to have major headaches, loss of energy, irritability, loss of focus, etc. Not something you want in the military.

    Plus a huge part of recruitment and retention in the military revolves around morale. We are already having issues with that which is contributing to the recruitment and retention issues we are experiencing. Trying to take away all of the good stuff from the chow hall will 100% have a negative effect on morale and recruitment.

    This is why the powers at be have been flirting with the whole tobacco sales on base for decades yet they never pull the trigger on that. Yeah having Soldiers smoking and dipping all day is bad for their health, but banning those things or even refusing to sell them on base would crush morale and be even more detrimental to the force overall than the improved health benefits. So pretty much every unit allows troops to walk around with dip bottles indoors even though "tobacco use is prohibited inside this military facility" because pissing people off isn't worth the health benefit of banning the stuff they like.

    Plus as far as the actual "readiness" goes and accomplishing the "mission" this obesity thing isn't as big of a deal in the military as the numbers may seem. The overwhelming vast majority of the military has jobs that are about as physically demanding as the DMV clerk. The combat troops who actually go out and physically fight the wars are a very small percentage of the force and most of those are in decent enough shape. The overweight personnel tend to mostly be support who, outside of being unsightly in a uniform, aren't really "detrimental" to the force by being overweight. As far as the argument regarding their health and the burden on the free healthcare system the military provides that's not really a factor either. Most of these people are young to where even their unhealthy lifestyle isn't going to do much to them yet. If we start seeing a huge increase in heartattacks in the military or something then we have an issue but as far as I know we don't.
     
    Last edited: Jul 18, 2020
  22. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    would not be so sure about that, lot of positives from keto, less anxiety, less health issues, better healing from head injuries, food for eating on the go is less space, people can go longer without eating and still preform well

    I think it will start with the navy due to the ability for people to use less oxygen when on keto as fat is a cleaner burning fuel for the body

    "Plus keto screws with people differently causing some to have major headaches, loss of energy, irritability, loss of focus, etc. Not something you want in the military."

    the items you mention are early on and caused by carb withdraw - that goes away once the carbs been out of the system a few week
     
    Last edited: Jul 18, 2020
  23. LoneStarGal

    LoneStarGal Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Haha. That looks like the beautiful photograph on the outside of a frozen dinner. Ever buy frozen dinners? What's actually served inside the box hardly resembles food professionally depicted on the outside. Same with Mooch's school lunches.

    What corps? Kids were being forced to take one fruit or vegetable, and then they were throwing them in the trash, and only eating the "low-sodium" fried meat nuggets. It was costing school districts wads of money to pay for the high minimum requirements that just went to trash can food waste. Kids were getting home from school complaining to parents that they were starving to death since the menu wasn't palatable to them.

    Some schools completely opted out of the school lunch program, even though they lost thousands in federal funding. Wasn't worth it.

    Anyway, good intentions that failed miserably and predictably in practice. Most decisions are better left to the local and state level, so dismal failures are not widespread over the entire nation.
     
    Last edited: Jul 18, 2020
  24. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I think kids needs more choices, I would offer low carb options as well

    sadly school lunches basically been tv dinners since I was a kid

    everyone talks about healthy lunches until the $$$ comes up, then back to normal
     
    Last edited: Jul 18, 2020
  25. LoneStarGal

    LoneStarGal Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    A lot of kids got short-changed by the trend toward Helicopter Parenting. They were never allowed to be anywhere not under the supervision and authority of an adult. Now they've grown up and don't know how to "do adulting" for themselves. This has resulted in a wave of kids who lean into Socialism/Marxism with the shining promises that "Government will take care of all your needs", just like your parents or other authority figures did while you were (prevented from) growing up.
     

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