Though the United States has the advantage of remote-controlled drone planes and robots, it still needs to put soldiers on the ground to fight its various wars. But there's a problem: Of the more than 9 million young adults in the nation aged 17 to 24, more than one-quarter are too overweight to join the military. And that's a threat, believe it or not, to national security, according to a large group of military leaders. Taking a page from the book of Jamie Oliver, the British chef who is fighting in a reality television show to improve the nutritional quality of U.S. school lunches -- a culture that declares french fries a vegetable -- more than 130 retired military leaders sidled up for a press conference today with Sen. Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican, and President Barack Obama's agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack. They announced an effort to get schools to shape up or ship out when it comes to feeding the nation's future soldiers.

While some parents are sure to wince at the suggestion that their children are fodder for the military (let alone overweight), the attempt by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Mission: Readiness group to improve school food is sure to be welcomed by a wide variety of groups, some that have long complained that agricultural lobbying and fast-food culture have conspired to create an extremely unhealthy generation of children that will eventually become a burden to the nation's strained health care system.

The statistics, released by Mission: Readiness today, are staggering. Pointing to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there's been a dramatic increase in obesity among young adults across the country since 1995. The number of states with 40 percent or more of young adults considered to be overweight has risen from one state to 39 states over that time.

The retired military leaders want Congress to:

␣ Get the junk food and remaining high-calorie beverages out of the nation's schools

␣ Support the administration's proposal of an increase of $1 billion per year for ten years for child nutrition programs that would improve nutrition standards, upgrade the quality of meals served in schools and enable more children to have access to these programs, and

␣ Help develop new school-based strategies, based on research, that help parents and children adopt healthier life-long eating and exercise habits.

"While we are meeting our recruitment targets today, those of us who have served in command roles are worried about the trends we see," Rear Admiral James A. Barnett Jr. said in a news release. "Our national security in the year 2030 is absolutely dependent on reversing the alarming rates of child obesity. When over a quarter of young adults are too fat to fight, we need to take notice. We urge Congress to take action on child nutrition this year."

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