WEBVTT

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Hello, my name's Hertling

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and I'm a soldier and

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-- you probably could tell that.

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I've been in the military for 38 years.

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I'm thinking of making it a career.

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I have seen -- (Laughter) --

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I have seen and studied and analysed

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all types of security threats.

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I've fought in several wars

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but there's an emerging threat
that we're seeing

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and I'd like to talk a little bit
about today

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that I think will have an effect
on our future,

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our economy,

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our youth

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and our economic system.

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It is an emerging threat

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that concerns me significantly

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and it's represented in this picture.

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Now you might think,

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why is a soldier talking about

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a young man who is obviously inactive

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and perhaps is a little bit overweight?

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And it's because of some things I've seen

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in the last several years

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and I'd like to talk a little bit about those today

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and related to how I believe

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it could be a national security threat

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within the next 20 to 30 years.

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First of all, in 1983,

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the Army sent me on something

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called a broadening experience.

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I was asked to go graduate school

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at Indiana University.

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I had studied as an undergraduate 
in International Relations

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but they said, "Hey we want you to go

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and get a Master's degree
in Exercise Physiology

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and then teach PE at West Point."

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So I said, "Okay, sounds like a great idea.

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It's broadening to be sure."

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And I went out there -- (Laugther) --

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I went to Indiana University

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and my first class was an anatomy class

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and I had an anatomy lab.

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I walked into the classroom

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and they issued me a cadaver.

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As they did everyone else in the class.

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And the cadaver I had,
came with a medical history

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The professor told us,
"In order to respect

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the people who have given
their bodies to science

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we'd ask you to respect them,
too, and you perhaps

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wanna name them to remind yourself

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that they were once a person

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although we don't wanna give you
their real name."

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So I named mine Charlie.

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Charlie had a medical history.

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He had been a two-pack-a-day smoker.

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Charlie had not exercised in the last 20 years.

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Charlie was extremely overweight

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and Charlie had died of a cardiovascular disease

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and he was 46 years old.

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When we pulled him up and we began,

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the various students in the room began

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our disection of these bodies

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I had a lot of a tougher time

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than some of the other students

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because I had to cut through

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several layers of adipose.

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When I got to the internal body cavities

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it was amazing to me

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comparing Charlie's organs

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to some of the organs of 
the other students in the class.

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The heart was surrounded by fat

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several inches.

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One of the tricks our instructors taught us was,

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you know, we had to through these labs

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where we had to name what vein was which

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and what artery was which,

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and the professor said, "If you pull

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on an artery, it's like a rubber band.

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If you pull on a vein, it's like 
a guitar string and it'll twang."

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When I pulled on Charlie's arteries and veins

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they broke off into my hand.

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So I finished grad school

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and went to teach at West Point for 3 years

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from '83 to '86

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and then after that assignment

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I went back to the operational Army

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and did things that all soldiers do:

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commanded organizations,

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trained, went into combat several times,

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and then coming out of combat

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as a Division Commander in 2009

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the Army decided they wanted to promote me

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to three-star General

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I think because they wanted to prove

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they have a sense of humor.

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They then sent me to be the Commander of

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Initial Military Training.

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My job was to train
the 160,000 or so soldiers

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or correction: civilians,

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that would come into the Army every year

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and turn them into soldiers.

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What I found when I reported to that assignment

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disturbed me.

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Several facts came to my attention.

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First of all, 75% or more

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a little bit more actually

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of the civilians who wanted to join the Army

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were not qualified to do so.

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75% of the 17-24 year olds 
who wanted to join the Army

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were not qualified

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and the number one reason

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was because they were obese.

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Of the 25% that could join the Army

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what we found on the first day of basic training

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was that about 60% of them

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could not pass the PT test

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that we gave on the first day.

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And that was: 
one minute of push-ups,

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one minute of sit-ups and
a one-mile run.

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Now, that's not a difficult test.

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But we were finding that

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a great majority of our new soldiers

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coming off the civilian environment,

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could not pass that test.

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I couldn't understand what had happened.

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This was not what I had left

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studying physical education in 1986.

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As we did some analyses

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I realized that a couple of things had changed.

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First of all, number one
and the primary reason was

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starting in the late '90s

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the majority of our elementary
and high schools

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stopped teaching PE,

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and in fact, only five states

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of the 50 of our country right now

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have mandatory requirements
for physical education

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between K and 12th grade today.

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Five out of 50.

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Now, you say,
"Okay, well that's interesting,

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but what does the Army care about that?"

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Well, we're getting the product of that

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but in addition to second and third order effects

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were young people that were joining our service

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could not run, dodge, jump, tumble, roll

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the kinds of things you expect soldiers to do

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if they're in combat.

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The second thing we found

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or that I found or realized was

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that our diet had changed radically

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in the last 15 years.

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We were supersizing everything.

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Having been stationed overseas in Germany,

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that's not the case there,

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but they were supersizing --

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if you want a large fries

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you can get extra large
and extra-extra large.

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You couldn't just get a 16 oz drink,

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you could get a 24, 42, 64 oz soda.

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And that was having a deleterious effect.

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It was fascinating to me

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that we were also seeing,

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a scientist told me,

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that in the last 15 years

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from the time I left West Point until today

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Americans eat about 30% more calories a day

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than they had in 1983

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and about 15 lbs more of sugar a year.

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Phenomenal statistics.

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But the combination
of a lack of physical education

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and an increase of poor nutrition

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was causing secondary effects.

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This is the "O" food group, by the way.

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I started calling it the "O" food group

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because anything that ends in an "O"

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is probably not good for you.

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(Laugther)

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I haven't found anything
that ended in "O" yet

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that was actually very nutritious in nature.

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But what we started to do was

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we saw some second and third order effects

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and this is one of them

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this is at one of our training bases

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and we have five in the United States Army.

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We were seeing a malady called

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femoral neck stress injuries,

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and what that means is that

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the tip of the pelvis would crack

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and it wouldn't be a clean break

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but it would be a stress fracture

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that would cause significant problems

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and you can see starting in 2000
that we were beginning to see this

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and this is because the people 
we were recruiting were just coming of age

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and many of them had not had PE

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and they had started to have the bad nutrition.

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But by 2009 when our new recruits

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were 18 or 19 years old

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they had gone through their entire life

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without having a PE class
and dependent on bad nutrition.

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Those 135 that we had at one training base

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are significant injuries because

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in order to fix it

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it costs anywhere between USD 100,000
and USD 300,000.

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So this is an economic issue.

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This isn't just a soldier health issue.

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For me this was an economic issue.

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The third reason, and I'll say this

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then move quickly on.

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The third reason we saw

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was an increase in technology.

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Now, I'm a big fan of technology,

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but the researchers had told me

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that we now watch as a nation

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about 150 hours of television a month.

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That's five hours a day.

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In 2009, when we started this study

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we were seeing anywhere
from 30 to 40 on average

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hours of internet searches

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by adult male Americans per month.

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That's between one and two hours a day.

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Gaming was off the charts.

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In 2009, and it's increased since then

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the average teenager was playing

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thirteen our of video games per week.

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Now all those hours in front of a tube

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were replacing the play time

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and that's significant.

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In addition to that,

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the final one, number four:

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We're terrible examples to our children.

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We're in too much of a rush.

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We're eating poorly

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we're eating fast foods

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we're relaxing in front of the television
at the end of the day.

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We also are relying on technology

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instead of play

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and we're not balancing our lives.

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My wife has a stitchery in our house

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as we've raised two children

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and now a couple of grandchildren

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that says, "Your children are watching you."

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What you do speaks louder
than anything you can say.

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We were not doing the right things
for our children.

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So in typical army fashion

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I said, "We've got to address these issues
with our new recruits."

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And we changed several things.

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We began something we called

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the Soldier Athlete Initiative

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because you can't just say
to a bunch of 18 year olds,

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"We're going to get you all in shape

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and stop feeding you cheeseburgers."

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You have to give kind of a sexy title

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to it so we called it

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Soldier Athlete Initiative.

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If you're going to perform on the battle field,

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you have got to train like a champion.

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And what we did was,
we completely changed

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well, it's a three-legged stool

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we completely changed the way
we were training

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to compensate for things
that were not going on

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in grade school and high school.

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We assigned physical terapists

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and athletic trainers
to every organization

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because we wanted
to prevent the injuries

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and treat them before they turned into

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those USD 100,000 bone stress fractures.

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We wanted to fix them
as they became visible.

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And then the third thing
and probably the most important was

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we changed the way
we feed food in the mess halls

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the dining facilities.

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We called it "Fueling the Soldier."

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You can't just say,
"Hey, have a salad."

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We instead say -- (Laugther) --

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you've got to advertise with soldiers

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so we said,
"Hey, we're going to fuel you

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for maximum performance."

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This is what sports teams are doing.

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This is what NFL, major league baseball

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they know they've got to eat right

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in order to perform at their maximum.

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Okay, I'm not going to dwell...

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Within the first year, we saw

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some unbelievably strong statistics

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that shows this was working:

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reduction in injuries,

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we saved about USD 30 million the first year

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just in treatment of injuries.

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30 million in the army.

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Just on injury prevention

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And we began to see weight loss

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and improved... or we reduced
the number of

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overweight soldiers we have in the Army.

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We still have a way to go.

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We've advanced this "Fueling the Soldier"

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to "Fueling the Teams"

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and in fact we've redirected

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to the Department of Defense Schools

00:11:48.007 --> 00:11:50.073
for our young people
and we're calling it

00:11:50.073 --> 00:11:53.024
"Fueling the future."

00:11:53.039 --> 00:11:56.107
So we fixed it!
Or we're on our way to fix it.

00:11:56.107 --> 00:11:57.714
What's interesting about this

00:11:57.714 --> 00:12:02.787
is your Army combined with your Navy,
your Marine Corps

00:12:02.787 --> 00:12:04.410
you Air Force and your Coast Guard

00:12:04.410 --> 00:12:09.866
makes up less than 1%
of the American population.

00:12:09.866 --> 00:12:12.053
So my concern is:

00:12:12.053 --> 00:12:16.151
What's going on with the other 99%?

00:12:16.151 --> 00:12:18.516
And this gets me back to my issue of this

00:12:18.516 --> 00:12:21.167
being a national security concern.

00:12:21.167 --> 00:12:22.865
I'm going to show you

00:12:22.865 --> 00:12:24.848
one area and that's just levels of obesity.

00:12:24.848 --> 00:12:27.446
This was a chart that represents

00:12:27.446 --> 00:12:28.997
the number of states in the Union

00:12:28.997 --> 00:12:33.176
that were below 20% obesity rates

00:12:33.176 --> 00:12:37.173
on average from a child of 14 to 19 years old.

00:12:37.173 --> 00:12:39.415
This was in 1985.

00:12:39.415 --> 00:12:41.647
Watch what happens.

00:12:55.357 --> 00:12:57.094
As you can see

00:12:57.094 --> 00:13:01.602
in 2009, it's significantly worse.

00:13:01.602 --> 00:13:05.423
The predictions for 2030

00:13:05.423 --> 00:13:07.184
are these:

00:13:08.461 --> 00:13:10.163
You can see the number of states

00:13:10.163 --> 00:13:14.367
that have greater than 65% children obese.

00:13:14.367 --> 00:13:17.985
This is not overweight, this is obese.

00:13:17.985 --> 00:13:19.276
Now, the related issues

00:13:19.276 --> 00:13:20.929
that I told you the issue with our injury rates

00:13:20.929 --> 00:13:23.042
and how much we were paying to fix people

00:13:23.042 --> 00:13:24.741
is significant.

00:13:24.741 --> 00:13:26.212
We spend estimated

00:13:26.212 --> 00:13:28.154
the Department of Health and Education

00:13:28.154 --> 00:13:30.146
both determined that we spend

00:13:30.146 --> 00:13:36.300
on average today between USD 150 
to USD 200 billion per year

00:13:36.300 --> 00:13:40.202
treating the results of childhood obesity.

00:13:40.202 --> 00:13:42.451
We're seeing an increase in diabetes.

00:13:42.451 --> 00:13:43.841
We estimate that we will have

00:13:43.841 --> 00:13:48.203
a 40% cardiovascular disease rate
by the year 2030.

00:13:48.203 --> 00:13:49.735
This is significant.

00:13:49.735 --> 00:13:52.906
This is a health care issue.

00:13:52.906 --> 00:13:54.462
An economic issue.

00:13:54.462 --> 00:13:56.591
A readiness issue for me because

00:13:56.591 --> 00:13:59.163
I've seen my pool of recruits deplete

00:13:59.163 --> 00:14:00.563
based on this.

00:14:00.563 --> 00:14:03.166
I can't pull them in in order to fix them.

00:14:03.166 --> 00:14:06.013
And it's just a competition issue.

00:14:06.013 --> 00:14:08.388
There's other studies
that show what obesity

00:14:08.388 --> 00:14:11.357
and lack of activity do to young people.

00:14:11.357 --> 00:14:14.332
So I believe this is certainly

00:14:14.332 --> 00:14:16.865
a national security concern.

00:14:16.865 --> 00:14:19.959
There are several organizations
who are attempting to approach this.

00:14:19.964 --> 00:14:23.119
You may have heard of
Mayor Bloomberg in New York

00:14:23.119 --> 00:14:25.627
who has banned all sugary drinks

00:14:25.627 --> 00:14:29.646
above 16 oz in schools and public restaurants
in New York City

00:14:29.646 --> 00:14:32.162
and he took a lot of heat for that.

00:14:32.162 --> 00:14:36.459
Nike, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Subway

00:14:36.459 --> 00:14:39.019
are all using overweight actors in their adds

00:14:39.019 --> 00:14:41.193
to pattern behavior

00:14:41.193 --> 00:14:43.281
and perhaps to turn this thing around.

00:14:43.281 --> 00:14:46.036
Nickelodeon in last year's
Worldwide Day of Play

00:14:46.036 --> 00:14:48.198
decided to put their screens black

00:14:48.198 --> 00:14:50.385
as opposed to showing programming

00:14:50.385 --> 00:14:52.426
in order to get children outside and play.

00:14:52.426 --> 00:14:53.560
And of course our First Lady

00:14:53.560 --> 00:14:55.332
over the last several years

00:14:55.332 --> 00:14:57.949
has been attempting to do "Let's Move!"

00:14:57.949 --> 00:15:00.266
and the counter obesity measures.

00:15:00.266 --> 00:15:02.521
This concerns me.

00:15:02.521 --> 00:15:04.164
This concerns me greatly.

00:15:04.164 --> 00:15:06.525
Again as I said

00:15:06.525 --> 00:15:08.966
my name is Hertling,
I am a soldier.

00:15:09.196 --> 00:15:11.587
I've been a soldier for 38 years.

00:15:12.326 --> 00:15:15.843
This is not something the Army can fix.

00:15:15.843 --> 00:15:17.930
This is not something you can put
a yellow ribbon on

00:15:17.930 --> 00:15:20.905
and say, "Let somebody else take care of it".

00:15:20.905 --> 00:15:22.260
This is not something

00:15:22.260 --> 00:15:24.106
that we can rely on governments

00:15:24.106 --> 00:15:26.145
or organizations to do.

00:15:26.145 --> 00:15:28.693
Be fearless in terms of writing your schools.

00:15:28.693 --> 00:15:31.082
Be fearless in trying to get nutrition

00:15:31.082 --> 00:15:32.578
back in restaurants.

00:15:32.578 --> 00:15:35.090
Be fearless in balancing your lives

00:15:35.090 --> 00:15:36.861
and getting out to exercise.

00:15:36.861 --> 00:15:39.044
Be fearless in modelling your behavior

00:15:39.044 --> 00:15:41.409
for young people.

00:15:42.256 --> 00:15:43.729
That will prevent

00:15:43.729 --> 00:15:46.515
a whole lot of Charlies in the future.

00:15:46.515 --> 00:15:47.812
Thank you very much.

00:15:47.812 --> 00:15:50.041
(Applause)