Writing in the Washington Post on Friday, retired US army generals John M. Shalikashvili and Hugh Shelton, referred to several sources, including the US Army’s own analysis of national data that shows as of 2005, and the figures have changed little since, 27 per cent of Americans aged 17 to 24, some 9 million young adults, were too overweight to serve in the military.

The leading medical reason recruits are rejected for military service in the US today is being overweight or obese, wrote Shalikashvili and Shelton, both members of the executive advisory council of Mission: Readiness, a nonprofit organization of retired senior military leaders, who referred also to a recent report from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research that showed over the last 15 years the proportion of potential recruits who have not passed their physical exam because of their weight has gone up nearly 70 per cent.

This is backed up by data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who report that the number of states where 40 per cent or more of young adults are overweight or obese has risen dramatically from only one in 1998 to 39 in 2008.

This not the first time the military has spoken out about how the health of America’s children poses a threat to national security: the last time was in 1945 when they expressed concern about the poor health and nutrition of potential recruits, and Congress responded by creating a national school lunch program.

But it appears that the school lunch program has now gone too far in fuelling children with calorie-laden french fries, pizza and other unhealthy foods.

About 40 per cent of American children’s calories are consumed during school hours, and Mission: Readiness proposes that if properly managed, the school environment could be the key to getting children to eat more healthily, as suggested in a recent paper published in Health Affairs in March, where researchers from Rice University and the University of Houston concluded that the most effective way to combat obesity in poor children is to increase their participation in federal nutrition programs.

Shalikashvili and Shelton note that saving some of the $75 billion dollars the US spends every year on obesity-related medical expenses could pay for school districts to provide children with more fruits, vegetables and whole grains, and cut down on foods with too much sugar, salt, fat and calories.

Mission: Readiness wants Congress to pass new child nutrition legislation that:

• Takes the junk food and high-calorie drinks out of schools.
• Brings in new standards for school meals based on the latest Institute of Medicine recommendation: the current ones are 15 years out of date.
• Supports the Obama administration’s proposed increase of $1 billion per year for 10 years for improved child nutrition programs.
• Develops researched and proven ways for schools to help parents and children adopt healthy eating and exercise habits for life.

Retired Navy Rear Adm. James Barnett Jr, a member of the officers group, said at a recent press conference held by Mission: Readiness , that national security in the year 2030 is “absolutely dependent” on reversing child obesity rates.

“When over a quarter of young adults are too fat to fight, we need to take notice,” said Barnett, according to a report by Associated Press.

The obesity problem doesn’t just affect recruitment, Mission: Readiness reports that the government spends tens of millions of dollars every year replacing military personnel that have to be discharged because of weight issues.

The School Nutrition Association (SNA) recently commended the call to increase funds for school nutrition programs, and pointed out that while a lot is already happening, there are problems where more money would make a huge impact.

For instance, in their 2009 report, the SNA said that across the country, nearly every school district was now offering students fresh fruits, vegetables and whole grains, with low-fat dairy products, salad bars and pre-packaged salads, but because of extremely limited budgets, they struggle to pay for the extra refrigeration, steamers, labor and other expenses involved.

Sources: Associated Press, Washington Post, Mission Readiness, MNT archives.

Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD

“In the midst of America’s obesity epidemic, physicians frequently advise their patients to reduce the number of calories they are consuming on a daily basis. This research shows that simply dieting will not likely cause substantial weight loss. Instead, diet and exercise must be combined to achieve this goal,” explained Judy Cameron Ph.D., a senior scientist at OHSU’s Oregon National Primate Research Center, and a professor of behavioral neuroscience and obstetrics & gynecology in the OHSU School of Medicine, as well as a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh.

To conduct the research, Cameron and OHSU post-doctoral fellow Elinor Sullivan, Ph.D., studied 18 female rhesus macaque monkeys at the Oregon National Primate Research Center. The monkeys were placed on a high-fat diet for several years. They were then returned to a lower-fat diet (standard monkey food) with a 30 percent reduction in calories. For a one-month period, the monkeys’ weight and activity levels were closely tracked. Activity was tracked through the use of an activity monitor worn on a collar.

“Surprisingly, there was no significant weight loss at the end of the month,” explained Sullivan. “However, there was a significant change in the activity levels for these monkeys. Naturally occurring levels of physical activity for the animals began to diminish soon after the reduced-calorie diet began. When caloric intake was further reduced in a second month, physical activity in the monkeys diminished even further.”

A comparison group of three monkeys was fed a normal monkey diet and was trained to exercise for one hour daily on a treadmill. This comparison group did lose weight.

“This study demonstrates that there is a natural body mechanism which conserves energy in response to a reduction in calories. Food is not always plentiful for humans and animals and the body seems to have developed a strategy for responding to these fluctuations,” added Cameron. “These findings will assist medical professionals in advising their patients. It may also impact the development of community interventions to battle the childhood obesity epidemic and lead to programs that emphasize both diet and exercise.”

The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Source:
Oregon Health & Science University

Researchers from the newly founded Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Cologne have studied whether health benefit stem from a reduction in specific nutrients or calorie intake in general by manipulating the diet of female fruit flies. The fruit flies were fed a diet of yeast, sugar and water, but with differing amounts of key nutrients, such as vitamins, lipids and amino acids. The scientists were able to show that longevity and fertility are affected by a combination of the type and amount of amino acids; whilst varying the amount of the other nutrients had little or no effect. Furthermore, the researchers found out in previous studies that levels of a particular amino acid – methionine – were crucial to increasing lifespan without decreasing fertility. By carefully manipulating the balance of amino acids, both lifespan and fertility were maximised. For the first time, this indicates that it is possible to extend lifespan without wholesale dietary restriction and without lowering reproductive capacity.

As the effects of dietary restriction on lifespan is evolutionary conserved – observed in different organisms – researchers believe that the essential mechanisms apply to it as well. Even though the human genome has about four times the number of genes as the fruit fly genome, there are many similarities on a genetic level, allowing these results to be of significance for humans as well.

Original work:
Richard C. Grandison, Matthew D. W. Piper & Linda Partridge
Amino-acid imbalance explains extension of lifespan by dietary restriction in Drosophila
Nature, December 3, 2009, doi:10.1038/nature08619

Source: Katharina Möller
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft