Missionary candidates must watch weight -- or wait

America is getting heavier every day. Many are familiar with this Centers for Disease Control graphic

of the states first becoming one color then another as the percent of

the population with body-mass index of obesity grows and grows like a

plague across the land.

There is not a trickle-down effect to children; it is a mudslide

effect with kids and young adults swallowed up in the overweight mire.

This challenge permeates the culture. Seats in airplanes, sports

stadiums and school desks are all getting too small. I am testing

children as young as 5 years old for metabolic disorders because they

fulfill the criteria of abdominal obesity, hypertension and body-mass

index greater than 97 percentile. The added frustration is the paucity

of clear therapeutic options beside the traditional eat right and eat

less, and do physical activity more and do it often.

Within the Latter-day Saint community there is another consequence.

There are medical complications of obesity that could prevent young men

and women from serving Mormon missions. The health concerns of the

50,000 full-time missionaries are utmost in the minds of both the

church leaders and to the parents of those called to serve in all

territories and climes. The problem of missionary obesity was

recognized because of the number of supposedly healthy young people who

were forced to come home due to injuries, musculoskeletal pain or

troubles with mobility, sleep, fatigue or the other assorted

consequences of being overweight.

One tool to define obesity is the body-mass index. The BMI is the