5 ms·

I don't think the US military accepts people with food allergies like that.

by lightbyte 8y ago

umvi 8y ago
During a draft they would, but right now in times of "peace" the military can be choosy.
- ardy42 8y ago
  > During a draft they would, but right now in times of "peace" the military can be choosy. No, even when there's a draft they don't accept people with certain medical problems. Someone who requires special meals to get enough calories to do his job would more than likely tax military logistics more than his labor is worth while deployed. Edit: I guess people don't like the above idea, but it's true: http://aaugusti.umwblogs.org/hist-375-military-history/#_ftn1 http://aaugusti.umwblogs.org/hist-375-military-history/#_ftn... > Michael was a young man during the era of the Vietnam War. He was given the lottery draft number nine and had to get a physical to proceed with the draft process. Michael attempted to use an allergy to wool as an excuse to get out of the draft. He was told to wear wool socks to see if the allergy was true. Under the socks, Michael used a solvent to create a rash to the wool. He tried several times before an Army doctor issued him as medically ineligible for service.
- VLM 8y ago
  As an example, during the surge volunteers could get enlistment waivers for almost anything except Celiac disease or peanut allergy. Minor felonies, not so minor felonies, fat, ASVAB test results worse than filling out the score sheet randomly, school dropout, addiction history, well, OK if you really want, but no food allergies.
  - johan_larson 8y ago
    Do you by any chance have a reference for how much standards were lowered during the surge? I knew they were lowered some, but I thought it was a little bit, not a huge amount.
    - xnyan 8y ago
      A single example of this was Bo Bergdahl. Generally speaking, washing out of another branch of the service for psychologcial reasons like Bo did (coast guard) is a huge red flag and would have disqualified him at another time. This is a personal ancidote from my experience only, but it was generally understood that during the Iraq period circa 2003 If you have a pulse, you were qualified to enlist.
    - VLM 8y ago
      USAREC works in mysterious ways. The exact legal definition of waiver vs standard vs requirement is complicated and fuzzy. This link from NYT (a fake news source, but sometimes accidentally factual) gives some insight in that the number of waivers roughly doubled. https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/us/14military.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/us/14military.html The effect on the army is unclear. Note that even during the surge more than ninety percent of recruits required no waivers. So you can spin the story as the number of recruits with clean records dropped from 98% to 96% which doesn't matter, or its a crisis that the number of troublemakers doubled.

I don't think the US military accepts people with food allergies like that.

umvi 8y ago

During a draft they would, but right now in times of "peace" the military can be choosy.

ardy42 8y ago
> During a draft they would, but right now in times of "peace" the military can be choosy. No, even when there's a draft they don't accept people with certain medical problems. Someone who requires special meals to get enough calories to do his job would more than likely tax military logistics more than his labor is worth while deployed. Edit: I guess people don't like the above idea, but it's true: http://aaugusti.umwblogs.org/hist-375-military-history/#_ftn1 http://aaugusti.umwblogs.org/hist-375-military-history/#_ftn... > Michael was a young man during the era of the Vietnam War. He was given the lottery draft number nine and had to get a physical to proceed with the draft process. Michael attempted to use an allergy to wool as an excuse to get out of the draft. He was told to wear wool socks to see if the allergy was true. Under the socks, Michael used a solvent to create a rash to the wool. He tried several times before an Army doctor issued him as medically ineligible for service.
VLM 8y ago
As an example, during the surge volunteers could get enlistment waivers for almost anything except Celiac disease or peanut allergy. Minor felonies, not so minor felonies, fat, ASVAB test results worse than filling out the score sheet randomly, school dropout, addiction history, well, OK if you really want, but no food allergies.
- johan_larson 8y ago
  Do you by any chance have a reference for how much standards were lowered during the surge? I knew they were lowered some, but I thought it was a little bit, not a huge amount.
  - xnyan 8y ago
    A single example of this was Bo Bergdahl. Generally speaking, washing out of another branch of the service for psychologcial reasons like Bo did (coast guard) is a huge red flag and would have disqualified him at another time. This is a personal ancidote from my experience only, but it was generally understood that during the Iraq period circa 2003 If you have a pulse, you were qualified to enlist.
  - VLM 8y ago
    USAREC works in mysterious ways. The exact legal definition of waiver vs standard vs requirement is complicated and fuzzy. This link from NYT (a fake news source, but sometimes accidentally factual) gives some insight in that the number of waivers roughly doubled. https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/us/14military.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/us/14military.html The effect on the army is unclear. Note that even during the surge more than ninety percent of recruits required no waivers. So you can spin the story as the number of recruits with clean records dropped from 98% to 96% which doesn't matter, or its a crisis that the number of troublemakers doubled.