Wednesday, April 21, 2010

School Lunches: Threat to National Security

Unhealthy school lunches pose a threat to national security, according to a group of retired military leaders. Leaving 27 percent of young adults "too fat to fight," childhood obesity is jeopardizing military recruitment, according to a report released by the non-profit group Mission: Readiness.

In the report, the retirees called for less junk food in schools, better nutrition programs for kids and overall better funding for federally provided school lunches. The group also appeared on Capitol Hill Tuesday with Sen. Richard Lugar and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to show their support for new legislation on the issue pending in congress. "Since 1995, the proportion of recruits who failed their physical exams because they were overweight has risen by nearly 70 percent," said Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "We need to reverse this trend, and an excellent place to start is by improving the quality of food served in our schools," he added.

According to the USDA, the National School Lunch Program provided low-cost or free lunches to more than 30.5 million children each school day in 2008. Through a combination of school lunch and breakfast programs, children "acquire close to 40 percent of their daily calories at school," said Barbara Moore, president of Shape Up America! If the food provided at school and the quality of education about nutrition isn't sufficient to teach good eating habits and stave off childhood obesity, then there's a good likelihood that these overweight kids will not be fit to enroll in the military, because an overweight child has about an 80 percent chance of remaining overweight as an adult.

Steve - will the threat of a withering military recruitment pool because of obesity wake people up?

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