All food and no play makes prisoners into plump boys

A HIGH-calorie diet combined with life in the cell block — almost around the clock in some cases — is making detainees at Guantanamo Bay fat.

Meals totalling 4,200 calories per day are brought to their cells, well above the 2,000-3,000 calories recommended for weight maintenance by US Government dietary guidelines.

And some inmates are eating everything on the menu.

One detainee has almost doubled in weight to 410 pounds, said Navy Commander Robert Durand, spokesman for the detention facilities at Guantanamo, a US Navy station in south-east Cuba.

Human rights groups attribute the weight gain to lack of exercise. They cite accounts of released detainees who complained they were allowed to exercise fewer than three times a week outside their cells.

But Cmdr Durand said detainees are simply served a wide variety of food and are 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.”

Most of the prisoners at Guantanamo picked up in Afghanistan and other conflict zones were slightly underweight when they arrived. Since then, they’ve gained an average of 20 pounds, and most are now “normal to mildly overweight or mildly obese”, according to the most recent measurements, he said.

The meals include meats prepared according to Islamic guidelines, along with fresh bread, vegetables and yoghurt. With nearly all detainees fasting in the daytime during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, authorities have arranged for a post-sunset meal and a midnight meal. Traditional desserts and honey also are served during the Ramadan observances.

Even two detainees who have been on a hunger strike for over a year are at “100% ideal body weight”, from nutrients fed through tubes inserted in their noses, Cmdr Durand said.

The calorie intake at Guantanamo is well above the norm for federal inmates in the US, who receive about 2,900 calories a day, said US Bureau of Prisons spokesman Michael Truman.

He said weight gain in the civilian system is not widespread and that most inmates “keep themselves in pretty good shape”.