Diet for Your Country

The Global War on Terror cannot be effectively fought with our young people becoming too globular themselves. Corpulent Millennials just end up bloating the corporate defense budget. Fat people can't fight.

So, the military industrial complex has a message for all you critics of government programs which fight childhood obesity. Forget about the terrible toll that a bad diet is taking on our increasingly impoverished population. We get that you don't care about people living longer, healthier lives just for the sake of living longer, healthier lives. But have you ever stopped to think about the awful truth that our young people are becoming too fat to keep the plutocracy safe and secure?

"Still Too Fat to Fight" is the title of a chilling new report funded by a mish-mash of health care think tanks and defense/homeland security contractors called Mission Readiness. It is apparently a follow-up to that other blockbuster called "Too Fat to Fight" which I had somehow missed. And in keeping with the current fad of blaming public schools for everything that is wrong with our society, the military mavens are putting the onus of obesity right on the public school system.

One in four Americans of military age is now too fat to join up, moan the generals and the admirals. And combined with poor education and crime, that means a whopping 75% are totally unqualified to fight and die for the oligarchy! From the report:

Finding ways to reverse our epidemic of obesity is crucial because the U.S. Department of Defense alone spends an estimated $1 billion per year for medical care associated with weight-related health problems.In a dramatic move to address this problem, the military is bringing healthier foods to its schools, dining facilities, and vending machines, but it cannotwin this fight alone. The civilian sector needs to do its part.

Look at this way, the bigwigs continue. If you counted up all the calories these kids consume and converted them into candy bars, the sweets would weigh more than the aircraft carrier Midway! Without a lean mean fighting machine, our ship of state will sink from the excess weight. Our progeny will have become a sorry nation of Colonel Blimps.

The report also inadvertently acknowledges that our economic recession has actually been a good thing when it comes to desperate unemployed young people joining up as a last resort. And OMG, what'll happen if and when times get better? Who will fight our forever wars then?

The childhood obesity epidemic is still threatening our national security. In fact, the rate of obesity is still climbing among boys age 12 to 19 years. When the impact of the recession is over and fewer people seek to join the military,or if America is drawn into a new conflict, our military could again have trouble finding a sufficient number of well educated recruits without serious criminal backgrounds, or
excess body fat. Even among those who can be admitted, if they are physically unfit from a lifetime of nutritionally weak diets and lack of exercise, they will be more prone to injuries.

The Pentagon retirees urge Congress not to dismantle public education and defund the free healthy meal programs for our impoverished youth. We need to keep them healthy enough to lose their limbs. We need them healthy enough to lose their minds. We need them physically fit so that when they die they can fit more easily into our assembly line of coffins.