Michael Melville Kirwan: June 2011

Thursday, June 30, 2011

This piece by Harvey Russell discussed the ever-increasing girth of Australian navy servicemen ... and women.

A huge number of soldiers in an otherwise relatively small Australian military are found to be unfit for active duty due to obesity and prescribed weight limit. The Defence Department said that more than 5600 men in uniform as of today are classified to be in poor physical condition because of weight-related issues. In a country with a decent 57,800 full time uniformed staff, that number is almost 10 per cent. The entire figure refers to personnel in the army, navy, and army.

Reservists are much worse, with over 12,200 found to be overweight and more than 4000 as obese. The surprising number of unfit for duty personnel and reservists came up after Defence released a report to answer questions on notice from Opposition spokesman Senator David Johnston. The report also detailed the fact that 35 to 38 per cent of military reservists have a body mass index (BMI) in the healthy range of 18.5 to 25. About 48 per cent have BMIs between 25 and 29.9 and the obese score 30 and above on the BM scale. This simply means that a many active personnel cannot do their job properly in the event of a war.

The figures for the reserves tally with the full-time forces where the army has an overweight rate of 49 per cent and 14 per cent of its male soldiers are obese.

The air force and the navy have equal highest rates of 53 per cent of overweight male staff and 17 per cent obesity rate. In a bigger picture, 14 per cent of the Australian Defence Force translating to 11,676 sailors, airmen, and soldiers are rated as obese. This figure is just a per cent behind United States military forces. Although Austrlain bases do not have Burger King and Pizza Hut stores unlike the American's, Australian military personnel can still be considered as almost as fat as their US counterparts. The biggest contributor to wieght-related issues, according to Major-General Paul Alexander, Head of Defence Force Health, is alcohol.

"We are now looking at undertaking a preventive health and well being program in relation to alcohol," he said. Senator Johnston said the Defence Force was better placed than most to reverse the obesity epidemic," he said.

The good news, according to the General Alexander, is that personnel at the frontlines are physically fit and healthy enough to do their jobs properly. However, he said, there are many areas behind the frontlines with less active personnel, which is affecting the statistics poorly.