Obesity threatens military enrollment

About 75 percent of military age young Americans are ineligible to serve, and obesity is a major factor.  Mission: Readiness, a group of senior retired military leaders that advocates for investments in children, profiled young adults who are “ready, willing and unable to serve” in Maine.

Mission: Readiness reports that 27 percent of young Americans are too overweight to join the military.  Using slightly laxer criteria from the Centers for Disease Control, the group shows that in Maine that number could be 41 percent.  That’s why the child nutrition bill was so important; it made food in schools both healthier and more available.  We’ll be fighting for food stamps later this year, and I hope you’ll join us then, too.