Comments on: Imperial Over-Eat

By: Michael Wells

Michael Wells — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 05:41:47 +0000

Interestingly, for both WW I & II, a large number of recruits were turned down because of malnutrition. They were too skinny.

Solve one problem, create another.

Gilroy is right. I could do 10 pullups at 18, but then that was the era of universal physical education. I’m astonished that so much attention is paid to diet and so little to exercise on both obesity and fitness.

By: Buzzcut

Buzzcut — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:01:09 +0000

Is this really a new phenomenon? I challenge anyone here to be honest about their own physical fitness when they were 18. Could YOU have done 10 pullups?

Pullups, not chinups. Palms facing away from you. They’re a lot harder that way.

I was a pencil neck at 18, but one of the (few) advantages was that I didn’t weigh much, and I could do 8 or so pullups. Not many guys could come anywhere close to that number.

Being as this was about 20 years ago now… this is nothing new.

On the bright side, with Predator drones and such, what the military needs is fat, video game playing nerds.

By: sm2

sm2 — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:26:03 +0000

It appears that the military, known for presenting one of few opportunities for poor young people (especially rural kids) is reeping the results of US policy choices. I’m surprised anyone finds this shocking. Given the country’s proclivity towards defense spending and maintaining a strong foreign policy focus, these results could serve as an impetus for addressing contemporary rural development issues (preferably using a regional development framework), rather than continuing the dichotomous rural/urban contentiousness. Who will be fit to serve? Rich kids, probably from cities? When has that ever happened? Community health, economics and the environment are interdependent.

By: Mike L.

Mike L. — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:37:42 +0000

RF, have you noticed “The allocation of food expenditure in married- and single-parent families.” (The Journal of Consumer Affairs| December 22, 2006 | Ziol-Guest, Kathleen M.; DeLeire, Thomas; Kalil, Ariel) ?
“… families where all parents are employed, irrespective of family structure, spend a greater share of their food budgets on food purchased away from home and a lesser share on vegetables, fruits, milk, and meat and beans compared with married-couple families in which the mother is not employed.”
This correlates with Mellander’s findings: higher-income, College-educated couples are more likely to be able to afford a stay-at-home parent.