Army Body Fat Assessment

The United States Army has a weight problem. The combined military services have an average of 7.8 percent of members who are obese or overweight (Tilghman, 2016); over 2 percent lower than the Army average of 10 percent of overweight Soldiers (Phippen, 2016). Is the issue that Soldiers are exceeding the body fat standards set forth by the Army, or is the issue the method the Army uses to calculate a Soldiers body fat? The present technique used by the Army is simple but rudimentary. Even though the current Army method used to assess a Soldiers body fat uses minimal equipment and is low-cost, the Army should adopt using bioelectrical impedance because the present method does not take a person's body structure into consideration, it is inaccurate and leaves too much room for human error.