To be perfectly honest, I never would've expected this. I don't care how woke the military is, or any of those things; I never thought our military - the strongest in the world, I'm told - would be this overweight. 68%!!! A full 68% of American service members are overweight, 21% being obese. This is a serious issue. The American Security Project, a Washington-based nonprofit, found that 68% of US troops qualified as either "overweight" or "obese" under the Body Mass Index, which takes into account a person's age, height and weight. It also determined that the number of troops in the "obese" category have more than doubled over the course of the past decade - from 10.4% in 2012, to 21.6% last year. The trend poses a "dire threat," according to the report released last week. A "dire threat." Uhhh, yeah, YA THINK?!?! From the study: At the time of the 2018 report, 44% of Americans aged 18 to 25 were too overweight to serve in our armed forces. Today, 57% are either clinically overweight or have obesity. As disease rates rise across all demographics, pre-accession fitness programs demonstrate promise in getting otherwise-qualified applicants through the door. Unfortunately, obesity rapidly recurs across all services, ranks, and positions after enlistment and is now pervasive throughout active-duty, reserve-duty, and veteran populations. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that the Department of Defense spends $1.5 billion annually on obesity- related healthcare for service members, veterans, and their families. So not only is our military getting fat, but we can't even recruit most of our citizens because they're too fat. We are a nation in decline, and somehow we think it's a good time to get caught up in a world war. Not with these statistics we shouldn't. Check this out: Yeah man, people come into the military at least somewhat in shape, but after they've been there a while they fatten up big time. This is interesting: Under current practices, a service member who fails their "tape test" may be ordered into a remedial program to increase their exercise and adjust their diet - with the consequence that they can be involuntarily discharged if they fail to lose weight, according to the Military Times. And now the woke will probably change that as well. But report author Courtney Manning said the military should instead send overweight soldiers to a doctor to examine what factors might be contributing to their weight, and whether any other health issues are developing as a result. The change in attitude comes months after the American Medical Association updated its policies on Body Mass Index, acknowledging "historical harm" and "racist exclusion" because "BMI is based primarily on data collected from previous generations of non-Hispanic whites." Its new policy urges doctors to use BMI as just one measure of body composition - in conjunction with other valid measures of risk such as visceral fat, body composition and waist circumference, as well as genetic and metabolic factors. Yup, next step for our military: Normalize obesity and maybe give out a few hugs (assuming your arms will wrap around such a person). We're screwed, man.