How obesity in the armed services has become a national security problem

Obesity among members of the military is not only expensive — it’s also a national security threat. That’s according to the non-partisan American Security Project, which says Americans can no longer ignore this crisis. For more, retired Marine Corps Brigadier General and President Emeritus of the project, Stephen Cheney joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Interview transcript: 

Tom Temin Mr. Cheney, good to have you with us.

Stephen Cheney Tom, thank you.

Tom Temin And your report states that the obesity problem is getting worse. In terms of the numbers and size of people coming into the military and having obesity while they’re in there. Tell us what you see right now.

Stephen Cheney Well, Tom, this has been a decades old problem. You know, I first was a company commander in the mid-seventies at recruit training in San Diego. It was a problem then. It’s a problem now. But what’s happened now is, of course, it’s exponentially worse. And when you have two-thirds plus of the active duty military force that’s obese, and then it becomes the number one reason for discharge, you know you’ve got a huge problem. Compound that on the recruiting side of the house, and I used to run recruiting at Parris Island for half the country for the Marines, it becomes even more difficult for the recruiters who the number one reason for disqualification for new recruits is obesity. So it’s compounded and it’s just gotten worse. Now, I mean, I could talk for a while about this, but when you’ve got two-thirds who are obese and you’re discharging them and then you have the costs, which we lay out in our report very succinctly, it’s over $1 billion. It’s like $1.35 billion in cost that obesity is causing to the Department of Defense. You know that this is now a catastrophe and it’s gotten dramatically worse since our first reports on this ten years ago and then again in 2018 and in 2023. Now is the time that I think the Department of Defense and the government really needs to take this issue on full force.

Tom Temin Yes. Your report states that the shortfall in recruiting for 2023 across the armed services was 41,0000, and 52,000 people were disqualified on the basis of weight. So more people were disqualified than the shortfall received, which kind of I think illustrates the problem.

Stephen Cheney Well, these are staggering statistics. There are two bright points that I’ll point out here. One is we know how people will reduce weight and it’s usually done through exercise and nutrition. And that has been partially successful. But the bigger problem is once they lose the weight, they gain it all back. And we long term, the DOD has not been successful in reducing that weight long term. Now, that’s the one first point that I made is that they know how to reduce it initially, but they don’t know how to keep it off long term. But two other points here. One is there’s there’s been some medical breakthroughs here recently in the last two or thgree years. And there’s a lot of medicines advertised about weight loss, weight control and all that business that can that can aid dramatically in the reduction of weight and keeping that weight off. So that needs to be considered, I’ll put it that way, and that the DOD needs to look at that. It needs to be funded. It needs to be studied. But there are other ways to help keep this weight off. And so that’s a little bit of a bright side to this.

Tom Temin Yeah, we’ve all heard stories of people that get recruited or join one way or the other, and then they get in great shape because of basic training is a pretty grim regimen. I guess if you’re that age. But then the issue of gaining it back while in the military, what is happening then that subsequent leaders outside of basic training and when service members go to wherever their initial assignment is that they start gaining the weight back, that seems like a like they’re almost on the outside again.

Stephen Cheney Well, it’s a huge problem and it’s compounded by the fact there aren’t enough medical professionals who are certified to talk about obesity nationwide, but certainly in the military. And then the other factor is they lay most of this responsibility on the commanders when what the commander ought to be able to do is identify somebody who’s gaining weight or is obese, refer them to the medical professional. Let them diagnose this as what it is a disease, and sit there and then chronically teach tackle that problem with prescriptions, with work on that and then turn it back over to the commander. Those are ways we can do this. But there’s such a shortage of physicians, both nationwide and in the military, to even talk about obesity. So that needs to be handled. And the way to do that is to fund it, get more medical professionals that are in there and then categorize it as the disease that it is. And the government has refused to do that. And it needs to do that across the spectrum. Veterans Affairs, DOD. It needs to be identified as a disease everywhere.

Tom Temin We’re speaking with retired Marine Corps Brigadier General Steven Cheney, who is also president emeritus of the American Security Project. And this issue must kind of travel. Forward in a wave, so to speak, as people become veterans. And then the Veterans Affairs Department, which provides, you know, lifetime health care to veterans, has to deal with it down the line. So I wonder if the billion dollar cost to the military really captures the entire cost.

Stephen Cheney Not even close. Not even close. You’ve got not hundreds of thousands, millions of veterans who are have the same problems that they had on active duty. And certainly those who got discharged because of obesity. That problem continues. And then you lay it on the Veterans Administration and the VA to tackle this problem. So it it just compounds itself. And I don’t, I was going to say, I don’t mean to sound too alarmist, but I am alarmist because now it’s gotten so much worse that if we don’t tackle this problem, we’re not going to be able to recruit the people we have. We’re not going to have the force that we need. They’re not going to be ready. We won’t be able to defend the country the way we want to defend the country. So, I mean, it really is that magnitude of a problem.

Tom Temin Do you ever wonder, is there something out there in American society? I mean, ultimately, the military can be no more virtuous or no more thin or whatever the case might be than the society in which it lives and thrives. And obesity seems to be a pandemic for the nation as a whole. Is that something the military can even deal with, do you think?

Stephen Cheney Yeah, I do. You know, interesting point you raised that we’re a reflection of society. But but that said, we recruit people 99, 98, 99% now are high school graduates, whereas the United States general public it’s about I think I might have this a little off. It’s about 75%. So you right off the bat you’ve got a quality cut here and that the quality cut is the young men and women that are entering our force are above the normal standard in the in our society. That’s for starters. And then, of course, we send them to boot camp in our occupational specialty school and we train them. And I think I’m not going to say they’re necessarily a reflection of society. I think they’re above the standards of society and they’re rising. These are super people. I mean, I recruited the best and the brightest when I was at Parris Island. They still are doing that today. And I admire the young men and women who are doing it. But that said, we’ve got this problem with obesity and we need to tackle it.

Tom Temin And in your opinion or your estimation in dealing with this and sending these reports in military leadership is aware of this.

Stephen Cheney They’re well aware of it. I mean, Dr. Corrado, at Walter Reed, we mentioned her talks about the weight control program. She’s she’s on top of it. She understands it. I think the bigger problem is trying to identify it to those even higher up. The secretary of defense, we sent him a letter last year signed by 50 of my contemporaries saying you have a huge problem on your hands here and it’s bigger than just Dr. Corrado. There’s others that need to be hopping on board with this. All the services should be anxious and looking at it. And then you go to the National Defense Authorization Act. You fund what needs to be funded, meaning get more doctors, get more prescriptions, identify the disease, and that that is a way forward to do that and go and go on Capitol Hill. And we’ve been on Capitol Hill a lot trying to talk to the folks about this, but they really, really, really need to get into it.

Tom Temin Yeah, 675,354 musculoskeletal injuries in 2023. That’s an astounding number.

Stephen Cheney Well, you know, it is an astounding number. You think that would really get the attention of folks that need to tackle? I mean, I hate to compare it to, like, cancer, but whenever you talk cancer, there’s all this scientific evidence. There’s it’s funded. There’s all these nonprofits that work on it. I mean, I’ve had cancer. I mean, I’m a survivor, but but we’re not approaching obesity as the disease that it is. And I’m not saying it’s equivalent to cancer, the cancer, but it’s it’s a real catastrophe for the military.

Tom Temin Retired Marine Corps Brigadier General Steven Cheney is president emeritus of the American Security Project. Thanks so much for joining me.

Stephen Cheney Tom, it’s been my pleasure.

Tom Temin We’ll post this interview along with a link to the obesity whitepaper at federalnewsnetwork.com/federaldrive. Subscribe to the Federal Drive wherever you get your podcasts.

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