The United States Navy has eliminated fried food and sugary drinks on its ships. It is keeping base gyms and fitness centers open all night. But its sailors keep getting fatter: A new Defense Department study found that 22 percent of them — roughly one in every five — now qualify as obese.

The Navy’s figure is the highest, but the study found striking rises in obesity rates in the other armed services as well, even though the Pentagon has rolled out one strategy after another in recent years to try to keep the troops trim. And the increases have military leaders worried.

“Obesity negatively impacts physical performance and military readiness and is associated with long-term health problems such as hypertension, diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, cancer, and risk for all-cause mortality,” the study’s authors wrote in the August issue of the Defense Department’s Medical Surveillance Monthly Report, where the data was first published.

The study used the body mass index, a simple, widely known metric that is calculated from height and weight measurements, which the military stores in its vast electronic health database. Using 2018 data, all troops who scored higher than 30 on the index were considered obese.