German army worried by increasing number of fat soldiers: report

Sat Sep 4, 4:28 PM ET

HAMBURG, Germany (AFP) - The German army has discovered that more and more of its rank-and-file soldiers are unable to keep up the pace because they are too fat, according to next Monday's issue of magazine Der Spiegel.

The army believes it risks being lumbered with a generation of under-performing heavyweights due to the dramatic overall rise in obesity in the country, the magazine says.

Armed Forces doctor Admiral Karsten Ocker has told Der Spiegal he feared Germany could be on course to becoming "an XXL nation".

The number of joint and back injuries is rising because soldiers are simply too fat to carry out the physical tasks expected of them, the report says.

In Germany one young person in three is now classed as obese, more than half of adolescents aged 16 to 18 do no sport and a quarter of 15-year-olds spend more than four hours a day in front of the television.

Senior army general Wolfgang Schneiderhan is now demanding that sport be made one of the central elements of military training, the magazine says.

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