Posted on 10/03/2006 10:59:01 AM PDT by KeyLargo
High-Calorie Diet Fattens U.S. Detainees
Oct 3, 1:33 PM (ET)
By MICHAEL MELIA
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - Offered a high-calorie diet and kept in their cells almost around the clock, many detainees at Guantanamo Bay are becoming fat.
Meals totaling a whopping 4,200 calories per day are brought to their cells - U.S. government dietary guidelines recommend 2,000 to 3,000 calories per day for weight maintenance - and some inmates are eating everything on the menu.
One detainee has almost doubled in weight, to 410 pounds (186 kilograms), Navy Cmdr. Robert Durand, spokesman for the detention facilities, said Monday.
Human rights groups attribute the weight gain to lack of mobility in the detainees' small cells. They cite accounts of released detainees who complained of being allowed to exercise fewer than three times a week.
But Durand said detainees are simply served a wide variety of food and expected to choose what appeals to them.
"The detainees are advised that they are offered more food than necessary to provide choice and variety, and that consuming all the food they are offered will result in weight gain," he said.
Most of the prisoners were picked up in Afghanistan and other conflict zones and were slightly underweight when they arrived at the military prison in southeast Cuba. Since then, they've gained an average of 20 pounds (9 kilograms), and most are now "normal to mildly overweight or mildly obese," he said.
The meals include meats prepared according to Islamic guidelines, fresh bread and yogurt. With nearly all detainees fasting in the daytime during Ramadan, authorities have arranged for two separate meals - a post-sunset meal and a midnight meal - to be delivered after dark. Traditional desserts and honey are served during the Ramadan observances.
The calorie intake at Guantanamo is well above the norm for federal inmates in the United States - they receive about 2,900 calories a day, said U.S. Bureau of Prisons spokesman Michael Truman. He said weight gain in the civilian system does not appear widespread and that most inmates "keep themselves in pretty good shape."
Prisoners who are more compliant get more exercise time at the prison, which now holds about 460 detainees, some of them kept for more than four years on suspicion of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban.
The most compliant detainees get up to 12 hours of exercise time, with access to treadmills, stationary bikes and other exercise equipment, Durand said. Guantanamo officials say "compliancy" is gauged solely by whether a detainee follows detention center rules and avoids causing disturbances, and has nothing to do with whether he is cooperating with interrogators.
Citing prison rules, Guantanamo officials wouldn't disclose the identity of their heaviest detainee, but Durand said he now weighs 410 pounds (186 kilograms), and arrived in 2002 weighing 215 pounds (98 kilograms).
Durand said all prisoners, including those held at maximum-security Camp 5, are allowed at least two hours of daily recreation - the minimum called for by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
However, reporters who visited Camp 5 in September were told that the exercise time had been reduced to one hour after the suicides of three detainees in June. During that visit, a "high-value" detainee could be seen walking in circles around a 10-by-18-foot fenced-in "recreation yard."
The exercise time has since been increased to 90 minutes, the commander of the camp guards said, and there were plans to restore the two-hour exercise periods.
The conflicting accounts of prisoners' exercise time highlight a need for neutral monitors to examine conditions and report their findings, said Curt Goering, of Amnesty International USA.
"The army says one thing, camp commanders say one thing, and then there's this other information available," he said. "It's really important that someone independent makes that assessment."
A delegation from the International Committee of the Red Cross arrived at the prison last week for interviews with detainees. The humanitarian organization, which does not publicly release some findings as a condition of its access to prisoners, was hoping to get a first glimpse of 14 top alleged al-Qaida figures and other terror suspects previously locked up in CIA secret prisons.
Looks like personal trainers will be required now at Club Gitmo.
Killing 'em with heart disease and diabetes is the only way we're gonna kill 'em, looks like.
It's torture!!! They're letting them eat too much good food!! The ACLU demands that they be put on starvation diets!!!!
Feed them to the sharks.
Next the Red Cross and the ACLU and Nancy Pelosi will be demanding that all detainees have access to Jenny Craig. Maybe Kirsten Alley can get down to Gitmo for the next round of TV ads.
This is a good plan. If they're so fat, they can't run away. Hehehe. Wonder what the "human rights group" would say if we starved them instead.
Torture by Donuts.
I once had a dog that could climb the fence to escape. My father fattened her up until she couldn't. I wonder if that is our strategery?
Mark Steyn said the Gitmo detainees were the only fat Afghans he's ever seen.
Next think we know, Krispy Kreme will open a franchise next door to Gitmo.
More like Hotel Gitmofornia. "You can check in any time we want, but you can never leave."
Agreed.....shark bait!
Just like in NYC it has to be the trans fat, not personnel decisions that are making these men fat. /s
There's a 99¢ store here that has 20lbs bag of rice for 99¢. Gitmo should order 100 pallets of that stuff and feed them like Sumo wrestlers
LOL!
Ximinez: So you think you are strong because you can survive the soft cushions. Well, we shall see. Biggles! Put her in the Comfy Chair!
[They roughly push her into the Comfy Chair]
Ximinez [with a cruel leer]: Now -- you will stay in the Comfy Chair until lunch time, with only a cup of coffee at eleven.
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