Threatened: U.S. troop deployments to places such as Afghanistan, pictured, could be threatened by poor fitness in the future.
There's one classic solution:
A nutritious balanced diet.
Posted on 05/02/2010 12:29:33 AM PDT by myknowledge
Fat teenagers are threatening America’s national security because they are too overweight to join the military, says a report.
The study blames the crisis – involving millions of youngsters – on unhealthy school meals. It claims nine million young adults, or 27 per cent of all Americans aged 17 to 24, are too fat to meet military recruiting standards.
And in some parts of the country, such as Huntington, West Virginia – featured in a controversial TV series by Jamie Oliver – more than half the population are clinically obese.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Threatened: U.S. troop deployments to places such as Afghanistan, pictured, could be threatened by poor fitness in the future.
There's one classic solution:
A nutritious balanced diet.
Not something the government should butt into. Ever.
I don’t think the government should tell people what to eat, but if the government schools are serving the meals, they could choose to provide healthier options.
It may be that kids today are too fearful of going out into their neighborhood for any kind of physical activity. It may be that those who do, terrorize the neighborhood and these hoods may be the real cause of overweight teenagers.
“It claims nine million young adults, or 27 per cent of all Americans aged 17 to 24, are too fat to meet military recruiting standards.”
Jack Webb might have the answer @1:45-2:17 of this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwnPDNOAKhs
Great little movie, btw.
Unless you want more troops for your army...
Yes well, we were all a little on the runty side after the Great Depression.
Six weeks of boot camp should get most of the recruits running decently. They are already pretty strong. Most big boys are.
We don’t have to run that much, anyway. Our enemies should be the ones running away. Who would you rather face in the trenches, a 6’ 220 pound Iowa farm boy or a 5’ 6” 125 pound North Korean? (The North Korean has a “good” BMI)
Perhaps we should also stop drugging so many of our boys with Ritalin, and rather let the majority except for the very serious head cases be ACTIVE and grow up ACTIVE.
Or maybe both. A percentage to be fat and easily controlled and a percentage to keep them and the rest of the sheeple in line.
Heh. That’s Biblical. My Old Testament professor in college noted a passage about men who were too fat to fight.
Don’t remember which passage it was.
That’s what they would do. They’d be foolish to have only fat and easily controlled drones.
School meals causing this? I doubt it. We didn’t exactly eat low calorie school meals when I was young (Tator Tots—Mmmmm). Perhaps a little less X-box and a little more running and playing outside?
Exactly! I ate public school lunches for 12 years and never got fat. In elementary school we had recess with monkey bars and swings! Few bumps and bruises but schools were not afraid of being sued. The next 6 years we had 2-4 periods of phys ed a week every semester.
But we also WALKED! You wanted to go somewhere, you walked. Rode bikes. Roller-skated (those old metal skates that clamped onto your shoes :)
He no longer takes the medicine and has learned to function without the drug. I think without those years with the drug, he may have never learned the skills he needed to get his mind to work for him instead of against him.
Difficult topic, this.
1. government has nothing to do with an individual’s preferences for food;
2. but governement will have to face the consequences of an increase in the number of youngsters having a wrong diet.
How to square these facts (for a conservative, that is)?
Obesity is something else than just ‘being corpulent’, ‘sturdily built’. It is an illness. It includes an enomously increased risk for cardiovascular diseases, clinical depression, diabetes. It places an astronomical financial burden on a country’s health care expenses, whatever way one thinks about the way these expenses should be insured.
Even apart from the problems it may present in recruiting able soldiers: the tentacles of widely spread obesity do their bad things in every layer of society.
It is not that hard to describe the consequences of nationwide obesity.
In short: a country gets weakened. Its defenses, literal and cultural, get compromised. It becomes a more easy prey for those who want to attack it. I’d even say that, as we speak, that potential Jihadists emphasize the virtues of being ‘lean and mean’.
The story is as old as humankind itself. Obesity represents decadence. The lack of will to stand up and defend. It is: apathy.
And therefore, my FRiends, I think that government should intervene, albeit in a measured way. If youngsters, did not learn how to eat healthily and moderately at home, then school should re-educate them in this respect. This is no shame. It is a practical solution for an enormous problem, threatening the whole western world.
Where do I start? How about no recess for fear of lawsuits? How about no physical education classes? How about unhealthy meals at home or in fast food restaurants? How about Cable TV, video games and the internet? How about the demise of patriotism and the tradition of military service as an obligation, not a last resort?
All other things being equal, I’d prefer to face the bigger target...
You want fat? Check out photos of the ATF and SIEU slobs. Democrats are fat. Go to any DMV if you want to see fatty behind the counter. Drive through any liberal city and check out the 400 lb tubs rolling down the street. Look at any democrat convention to see whales floating among a sea of fat. Democrats have a problem with fat. If democrats had to field an army, they’d need to be armed with defibrillators not rifles.
The cure for the problem is called “Boot Camp”.
What a big uproar about nothing.
Whoa! No wonder libs are fattening themselves into oblivion.
Agreed. It isn’t just the school meals. We’ve got neighbors, and I’ve seen lots of other parents do it. They make two dinners. One for them, of normal, healthy food, and one for the kids because the kids don’t like what their parents have made. So they get crap for dinner, and get bribed with ice cream to eat their crappy dinners.
Our kids got no choice. They were taught that we weren’t running a restuaraunt. They had to eat what they were served. As adults and teens they are not picky eaters and know what’s healthy.
Well, you can use your arguments for any situation and have govt intrude in our lives at every level. Just like they already do.
My brother-in-law camped at a National Park out west and shared the site briefly with a school bus-load of kids. The kids then had lunch—but tossed out all the good things. Among other items, he was given 20 perfectly-good apples.
:(
Hmmm -
thanks for replying, in the first place.
I think that there are exceptional situations thinkable. Government should not intervene, as I wrote, but there are threats that need be met.
Freedom, and a free market are wonderful concepts. But they can’t solve every problem under the sun.
If a dangerous infectious disease threatens the population of a country, IMHO then the only feasible remedy is superfast action by a goverment and commercial allies. The government alone can’t produce medical supplies on its own; and commercial allies can’t organize logistics in time (emergency traffic changes, that kind of thing).
Well, I hope this makes my stance clear. If not, only I am to blame.
“If a dangerous infectious disease threatens the population of a country, IMHO then the only feasible remedy is superfast action by a goverment and commercial allies.”
Well, the feds had a practice run at that with the swine flu scare. Dropped the ball entirely.
When I was in the infantry I was assigned to give PT tests to a bunch of young privates. They were not obese. At all. Most of them were weak, and couldn’t do many pushups. One fellow couldn’t do more than two. I shocked them all by telling them what a bunch of pussies they were, and that they were all dead men walking unless they got their act together.
When my kids had PT in high school it was called Physical Education instead of Physical Training as it was when I was a child. Their female PE teacher was a fat slob who assigned them reading and writing chores a couple of days a week instead of running their butts off five days a week.
When my kids screwed up they were dropped for pushups or situps Good ones. After a bit they could knock out 50 pushups at a whack.
Keep the govt out of my pantry and kitchen. They eff up everything they touch. Let the fat a$$es go to war. They will get in shape or they will get dead. Besides while they are drawing fire, the real warriors can get their work done.
Like a lot of conservatives, you don't know your history. JFK started the whole government intervention fitness scam. We have Physical Education teachers with Masters everywhere, how'd that work out? The government changed and propagandized national diets from cultural Atkins high fat, protein diets to carbohydrates. Weight and diabetes went through the roof and there was no decline in cardio vascular disease. Thank You Nanny Government.
Throw in the illegalization of many things young boys used to do, fighting, fishing, hunting, fort building and all replaced with more hours in the feminized, socialist schools, coupled with masses of poor and low income working families now being a single mom not supporting any constructive maleness in her sons...and their you go. All government done.
But hey, your fat, slovenly, wasteful sit on it's arse local/state/Federal government will be the leaders in the solution that they created.
It may surprise you -
I adore your post. I speak from a European perspective; and it is always nice to learn.
Fighting, fishing, hunting: good. Constructive maleness: ditto. The feminization of boys into ‘sensitive emphatizers’ is not good.
Obesity may well be a consequence of the programmed weakening of the male ego.
Thanks for your polemic jewel!
Good call. Esp. since you highlight the fact that there are indeed many youngsters that aren’t not fat at all, but have very weak muscles.
A question: has the whole idea of a male role model gone into decline? I seem to recall that G.I. Joe, Superman, Batman, boxing heroes, etc. etc. were big for American kids. IMHO the number of movies that celebrate physical development has not gone down; but on the other hand it’s a given that among the educated, physical fitness is not popular, even scoffed at (in Europe it is). Like it’s something for those across the railroad tracks.
Is Obama physically fit?
“A question: has the whole idea of a male role model gone into decline?”
H.E. double hockey sticks yes!No question. Why are there female “PE” teachers for high school aged boys? Why are “PE” classes integrated male/female? Look at how many military units/occupations are integrated male/female. Same with police/fire depts. Kids are expelled from school for fist fights. No more meet me at the flagpole at 3pm. They teach touchy feely, namby pamby “conflict resolution” and have anti bullying laws, rules and “education” in public schools. All of it turns men into pussies. There is a time to talk, and there is a time to kick ass. The kick ass part has been entirely left out.
Back in the day, if you complained about the meal then you went to bed hungry.
Now that’s considered child abouse.
Turn off the TV.
Ban the video games.
Disable texting on the cell phones.
Make sure the basketball, the football, the soccer ball are in good shape, replace when necessary. Keep the bikes tuned up.
Eat home. Cook your meals from scratch.
Pack the kid’s lunch (or better yet, teach them to do it themselves).
lean...mean...fighting...machine !!!
I work in a public school and went to them as a child.
The lunches today are much more disgusting and unhealthy. When you had chicken, it may have been fried, but it was chicken. Now, if you have chicken nuggets, it’s made of God knows what?
Our spaghetti as a child was made by the lunch ladies. I’m not sure if it’s out of a can now.
But I hold my personal disgust for what they serve at breakfast to those who qualify. Honey buns the size of my handprint, along with a large biscuit, sugar cereal and oj. And that’s just one meal! A lot of it goes in the trash (where I believe it belongs in the first place), but what stupidity and waste!
I agree that we were much more active and free, but these meals don’t help!
Thank you, and you are welcome and sorry if I seemed to ‘work’ you over a bit.
Anyways,
Obesity isn’t the disease, it is the symptom/sign and the disease is too much government.
My two sisters are teachers. Not too bright, but they take good care of the kids. I’ve talked to them about the differences in atmosphere or school culture from when we went to school.
In those days, 60-70’s, our schools were not yet ‘improved’ by various leftist notions. We had for males, shop classes with dangerous tools, that all were required to attend such that every boy would not grow up to be a Alan Alda/ Woody Allen type wimp around the house. We had, but it was optional boat building and car working. These had the added benefit of keeping the less academically inclined in school and maybe they would struggle with a class in Shakespeare. Gym classes were rowdy, movement based with winners and losers. No one, especially the fat kids were allowed to escape. So we didn’t need drugs to ‘calm’ down boys. They just used physical activity and let the boys basically go wild for a bit each day. Lunches were fatty, meaty served with fatty milk.
Another thing was that we still had male male teachers. Real guys, often veterans, so that if a single mom boy or girl didn’t know what a good male was like then there were plenty in the school systems and they acted as substitute father figures. Now my sisters tell me the teacher population is mostly female, and a few wimpy/gay males, with very few male male teachers. So, coupled that with the rise of single moms, kids raised with out a stable, moral male, and few in schools.
There is a disaster wipe out of males in our society, such as it is.
I know as a fact, the schools systems, basically owned by the leftists, and academia at large is hostel to maleness. Gary Cooper, John Wayne males are an enemy. The language, direct, simple, the ethos of not compromising, of lack of fear, disdaining petty material things...that attitude is threatening. For young males it is a disease state that must be treated with chemicals, weird psycho-Mao type group pressures and the like.
I don’t think it will last because the wealth of the nation, was build on taxing hard working people that were fairly honest. It was from this stoic, industrious behavior that mines were dug, mills worked, cities physically built.
In a general way, I think other than the military, the society doesn’t want males, and males don’t want this society anymore. So, we are left with what is left. A critical biological/social glue expelled, separated from the tribe. Pushed out, shunned. The US urban core is the future. Feral, unneeded males, paper shuffling/symbol manipulating wimp/gay males, and unmarried women.
By the way, I have been critical of US General McChristal who, supposedly, runs eight miles a day and looks like a anorexic and who shut down the McDonalds/junk food stands at the bases in Afghanistan. He should be using his time more intellectually, then trying to win a age group rated run. In his case, it is too much. Also, I was quiet fit in the Army, and thought that the US Army needed more academics, constantly at every rank. We had the running part down, books, learning...not so much. I’d often look at the officers in front of me and wish there were a couple of nerdish Jewish officers who would liven up the intellectual mix, such as it was.
Even housing.
Detroit, old cities, people had a yard to dig, plant, mow. A single car garage to work on the car. The house all required scraping, sanding painting every year. All good work for boys that burned off energy and gave them pride and skills.
Now? Urban/suburban socialist planners have people existing in ‘complexes’ with vinyl siding, maintance done by Mexican males. There isn’t piles of little work projects for the boys.
Labor/safety laws. You could get a job on a wood frame house crew around 15 or so. Hammer, nail pouch, pencil and knife and up on the staging you go and then roofing in a couple of weeks. Same thing in garages. I can remember kids pumping gas at age 15, or less. And kitchens? Dishwasher, busBOY, all well below 16. For girls chaimbermaids.
Today? No freeekin way.
You got away from your parents, you met people who worked worked for a living, customers, you got paid. Why wasn’t this good?
Yeah, kids got hurt, lost hands, killed raped. And what of the kids now? Suicide, guns, rape, gangs....and the upside of today’s kids existence is...?
But hey, I don’t have a PhD from Yale, so what do I/You/We know, eh?
Brilliant post, thank you! Your directness is informative as well as entertaining. And your biological insight is quite stunning (I am a biologist myself).
Perhaps you’re touching upon the current taboos. Each society has its own taboos, its anathemas. The impopularity (read: absence) of the male hero, the hunter/collector, and the defender, speaks volumes and may lie at the heart of the ‘obesity’-problem.
The connections may be complex. Well, then they need unravelling.
Again: tks for enlightening this dreary Dutch Sunday!
A&M.
Great call. I had to decipher the H.E. double hockey sticks thingy (never seen it before...).
Perhaps ‘kick ass’ is sooooo ‘50s now? At any rate, this is the way the pussy men would describe it...
Let our fighting machine warriors hide behind the fat guys.
Maybe hard struggle, hunting, warfare even, that the attributes of maleness that insured the survival has, maybe, brought us to a environment where it doesn’t fit. Like one of Darwin’s finches moved off the islands into a pet store aquarium. Only people don’t adapt as fast as flies and finches.
I think maybe this is why it is healthy for male to engage in some sort of male challenge activity. Sailing, rock climbing, drag races. It is good for them to have risk, challenge, male bonding. The activity does something therapeutic for them. The poor quality substitute might be expressed in gangs for younger males, or sitting in bars and self anesthetizing with alcohol for older males.
The counterpart for females. I remember reading about women who with their husbands moved out to the American West and lived in isolation for months at a time. A lot went crazy. It didn’t bother the males, the openness, the isolation, the hardship. But the women didn’t have the old village female social network to somehow therapy their brains.
To jump a bit. The rise of the constant snowfall of edicts, laws from the state. The modern state might well have pushed past the sex possibilities in humans. The constant growth in the need of the state to push harder with laws against ‘natural’ or biologically driven activity is a push against tension of millions of years of social/biological adaptation. In short, and I believe this, the modern state planner doesn’t understand his material, humans, and is trying to take, form, load up, put under tension a material, in this case masculine males, where they don’t want to go, or will not work, or ‘perform’ poorly. It is as if you wanted to make a raft of shaving cream, and yes it could be done, and float, but the material and the purpose are so poorly fitted that it wont last. This, and not so much economics, may be why so many state projects have such poor or expensive outcomes, requiring unseen constant maintenance expenses .
It is late spring with a hit of warm summer here. The birds are so noisy in the early morning that they wake me up. I have taken to wearing shorts, but my legs are so ghostly white, I don’t look at them.
I am a weak and casual student of Dutch history. People in a odd, poor, swampland, that per capital, and now forgotten, ruled a good part of the world, including starting New York, then New Amsterdam. Tough, shrewd, calculating, ship building, finance, civil engineering.
I was incited to go to Amsterdam once. So I was taken to the Van Gogh Museum. Very nice, with a nice cafe. The art, not so much. I was found in the cafe, as I started to race through the exhibit after a bit as the painting of Van Gogh mentally deteriorating depressed me. I was asked what I thought of his paintings, and I said, ‘No wonder why he killed himself’.
Anyways, I wondered over to the inner harbor as I like boats, and found the Ship Art(?) museum. Now, that’s art I like. Commercial, living, useful, and to me just as beautiful, just as genius. I am more interested in the water table, keeping houses steady, the front door styles, the canal systems, even talking to the cabbies on how they afford a nice Mercedes.
I like the Dutch, they are steady people with a good dry sense of humor. Not to mention the like of old wood things, beer, sausage, fish, root vegetables. Even the modernistic Dutch architecture seems a bit more humanized.
Too many parents use TV as a babysitter. Kids need to be outside playing. They get into the habit of sitting on their joebidens instead of running around, and then, as preteens and teens, they are parked playing video games or messing with the ‘puter. In addition, in some school districts, recess has been eliminated because the schools are fearful of lawsuits if a kid gets hurt.
Oh, the memories. I had the metal skates that clamped onto my shoes. I got them for my 10th birthday, and I thought I was pretty cool when I skated around with my skate key on a shoestring around my neck.
Yes, things were from "scratch" - there was no breakfast and I believe the only federal help was a milk subsidy (and probably cheese).
I see your points, but I would like to see the local school districts involved in educating students about nutrition and exercise. The fed should have no involvement in education whatsoever.
A true conservative has not problem with a community deciding on what is to be taught in its schools.
Hi -
thanks for taking the trouble to write this wonderful follow-up. You do have a way with words, that is sure.
You touch upon so many good points that it is simply impossible to comment on all of them today (gotta run soon for a nice dinner with two lovely women...).
Men and women are different. Women enjoy that kind of social network that you briefly mention; whilst men go barking mad if they’d have to sit around the house all of the time. Personally, I detest quite a lot of the social engineering that the Left is so fond of. E.g.: quota so that women can occupy 50% of all leading posts in the economy.
As early as in my student years I noticed differences between the women and men in charge at the University. Men would really lead a meeting, and see to it that things were accomplishes in a given time frame (1 h). Women loved to chat, meander, and drift away while going through a topic of interest. Of course I am exaggerating a bit here.
In a conflict, men would say: hey, let’s forget it, get over it. We need to move on. Women, on the other hand, would go back to the disagreement, and ‘undo it’, or go over it again endlessly. To no avail at all.
Social engineers love to deny reality. Like in:
‘everyone has the same IQ’, or:
‘everyone is entitled to higher education’ (the latter is ruinous, inasmuch as it leads to very low standards, and diplomas that are laughed at’.
OK Leisler, my time’s up now. Again: cheers for sharing your views on things.
We’ll meet again someday, I am sure.
Have a great Sunday!
It’s a tragedy really. The number one problem is women raising boys alone. Yes, the males are at fault too for abandoning their kids.
I have two sons, aged 5 and 3 respectively. My kids do not know how to turn on the television. They’ve never been to a movie theater. They don’t play video games nor will there ever be a video game consul inmy house.
As they get older, they will have access to a PC, but one that is in a common area not their rooms. I have other parents in the neighborhood that can’t believe I’ve never taken my boys to a movie.
The first thing my boys ask in the morning is when am I going to get home so we can have a “Beantown Beatdown” (we live in Boston). The beatdown is basically an hour-long wrestling match against my two boys. They jump off the couch on top of me, we steamroll eachother, I make them try and escape from the leg scissors etc...It gets very physical.
I’ve taught both boys how to do pushups and have started basic boxing and wrestling moves and counters.
After supper we usually play with army men or Star Wars figures. The kids build a fortress out of blocks or lincoln logs and man it with action figures. I then attack them with another “army”. We make sound effects like machine guns and explosions.
My boys know instantly that whining is an automatic no. they eat the supper we give them. Another quote in our house:”you get what you get”.
They eat fruits and veggies all day, but also get hot dogs, cheeseburgers and pizza from timt to time.
We walk everywhere. I got rid of their strollers ASAP when they were little. That’s one of my biggest pet peeves - mothers pushing kids around in strollers. 5 year-olds!!! Get them on their feet for crimminy sakes...
Full disclosure - I’m an active-duty Army Major. So I’m taking a vested interest in their physical training. That’s what a man is supposed to do. Unfortunately, most “men” have abdicated their parental responsibilities and our society will suffer for it.
One thing I do know for sure - My sons will never be lazy, and they will be warriors. As god intended.
That happened on November 4, 2008, my FRiend.
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