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Still too fat to fight

Several hundred retired military leaders are raising red flags about childhood obesity in the USA and its impact on finding qualified recruits, calling for junk food to be booted out of schools. Mission: Readiness, a group of more than 300 retired generals and admirals, is releasing a new report saying that the 40% of students who buy high-calorie, low-nutrient junk food from school vending machines and cafeteria a la carte lines consume an average of 130 calories a day from those types of foods (candy, chips, cookies, pastries). That's roughly 5% to 10% of the calories kids and teens should eat in a day. The analysis says that junk food adds up to 400 billion "empty" calories in a year or the calories in almost 2 billion candy bars, which would weigh almost 90,000 tons, more than the weight of the aircraft carrier Midway (70,000 tons).

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