Physical, Physiological, and Dietary Comparisons Between Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command Critical Skills Operators and Enablers

Abstract

MARSOC CSOs demonstrated significantly greater FFMI, AP, AC, VO2max, KF, KE, TE, and TF compared with enablers. Dietary intake was consistent between groups, but fueling concerns were identified for all personnel in the subgroup. These findings suggest the need for future studies to examine what physiological and strength thresholds are necessary to operate effectively as a member of a MSOT and determine the relationship between specific performance deficits and risk of injury. In addition, the integration of nutrition strategies that augment and optimize the performance of both CSOs and enablers may be beneficial.

Dietary Assessment Methods in Military and Veteran Populations: A Scoping Review

“…The year of publication of studies ranged from 1973-2019, with 63 (71%) of the studies being published from 2000 onwards [2,[6][7][8][20][21][22][23][24][25]29,30,32,[34][35][36][37]39,40,43,[46][47][48]51,53,56,[62][63][64][65][66][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78]81,82,[84][85][86][88][89][90]92,94,[96]…”

“…The continent most frequently studying the dietary intake of their military and veterans was North America. All North American sudies were conducted in the USA, with almost two thirds (n = 57, 64%) of included studies originating from this country [6,7,20,24,25,29,30,32,[36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43]46,49,[51][52][53][54][55][58][59][60][62][63][64][65][66]68,74,[77][78][79][80]82,83,88,89,[91][92][93][94][95][97][98][99][100...…”

“…One study did not report on participant numbers [45]. Forty-five of the 89 studies included male personnel (51%) [ The military population most frequently studied, in descending order, was the army with n = 48 (54%) [2,6,7,[21][22][23][24][29][30][31][32]34,35,[37][38][39][40][43][44][45][46][47][48][50][51][52][53][56][57][58][59][60][61][62]66,[70][71][72][73]76,77,82,84,88,89], followed by veterans n = 18 (20%) [20,[90][91]…”

“…The studies that used 24-hour recall (n = 8, 9%) [30,34,41,77,81,[93][94][95] varied in the number of times administered. Four studies administered a 24-hour recall once throughout the study [30,77,81,95], one study administered two 24-hour recalls at two time points [36], one study the method was administered twice in the main group and two to three times in a subset of participants [94], another had all participants undertake a 24-hour recall three times with a subset undertaking a further three recalls [93]. One study administered four 24-hour recalls [41].…”

“…One study administered four 24-hour recalls [41]. The use of a multiple-pass dietary recall (MPR) approach, within the administration of 24-hour recall, was only reported in one study [77].…”