Fat Nation?

I was visiting with a health care client when a startling statistic came up in one of our management meetings: 58% of the company’s employees were overweight—from slightly to hugely. Remember, this is a health care organization: hospitals, laboratories, health insurance, that sort of thing. One would expect a close-to-zero statistic. And one would be wrong, because it turns out that 30% of the staff are smokers too! That’s just too weird to comprehend.

Anyway, back to obesity. The CEO said that that 58% proportion pretty well mirrors the general population. The trend is impacting kids too. One hears different numbers—20%, 33%--but basically, the conclusion is that our kids are getting fatter. In fact, a cardiologist I talked to said that his office is now seeing 10 and 11 year old kids with arteriosclerosis.

Why? Crappy, high-fat, high-salt, high-sugar foods, of course. And, as USA Today just featured in a front page article, the fact that most kids nowadays prefer to stay home working their PC’s and playing video games and such rather than bicycling or climbing trees. Sedentary chubby kids tend to grow up to be more sedentary fatter adults.

I suppose this trend is great for some companies like Dell, Sony, and Electronic Arts. It’s also good for groups like Big and Tall retail stores, and the entire lose-weight-fast industry. It's good for drug companies which have plenty of goodies for obese people, and for the illnesses they'll undoubtedly contract in the future.

Does this trouble you as much as it does me? We’re spending $200 billion to liberate 24 million Iraquis from a destructive fate. Maybe we need to spend a little more money to liberate an increasingly fat nation from destructive lifestyles. It’s hard for me to believe that the U.S. can maintain a healthy, vibrant economy unless its workforce is filled with healthy, vibrant people. What do you think?