Obesity And Productivity

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http://www.ilo.org/public/english/support/publ/pdf/food.pdf

Fat workers are twice as likely as fit workers to miss work. In the United

States, the total cost attributable to obesity was $99.2 billion in 1995, Wanjek

wrote.

No free lunch, but healthy diet improves productivity

By Deborah Zabarenko

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - That fast-food burger, monster take-out sandwich or bag

of nutritional nothing you got from the vending machine at work does more than

make you sluggish after lunch.

It's probably making your company less productive.

The global cost amounts to billions of dollars a year in lost productivity,

considering that a diet loaded with fat and sugar puts workers at risk for

diabetes and obesity-related illnesses, said Wanjek, who wrote the

book on food in the workplace.

Obesity accounts for as much as 7 percent of total health costs in

industrialized countries, Wanjek reported in " Food at Work, " a review

commissioned by the United Nations

<http://search.news./search/news/?p=United+Nations> ' International

Labor Office.

Fat workers are twice as likely as fit workers to miss work. In the United

States, the total cost attributable to obesity was $99.2 billion in 1995, Wanjek

wrote.

" We're not talking about polio. We're not talking about smallpox. Those diseases

were hard to eradicate, " Wanjek said. " We're talking about nutritional diseases.

This should be a no-brainer. Provide access to better food, and the disease will

go away. "

There are solutions, but most require imagination and a bit of investment,

Wanjek said in a Reuters interview.

One high-end example is Dole Food Co., which subsidized a healthy dining room

for workers at its headquarters in Westlake Village, California, starting with

an unlimited salad bar for $1.50, free fruit snacks in the morning, free

vegetable snacks in the afternoon and encouragement to go to the gym and

exercise, alongside the company's chief.

BOOSTING MORALE

After six months, tests on 60 volunteers found lower cholesterol, lower levels

of certain proteins that are predictors of future heart disease, lower

triglycerides and glucose levels, said Grossman, director of the Dole

Nutrition Institute.

" It really is in the company's best interests to do it, in addition to boosting

morale, " Grossman said by telephone.

Not every company can afford to do what Dole did, but U.S. health care giant

Kaiser Permanente figured employees might eat more healthfully if local farmers

set up stalls on the company's grounds. They turned out to be right.

" Location is everything, " said Dr. Preston Maring, a physician who came up with

the farm market plan. " If we put markets in the pathway that people normally

walk, it's very hard to pass up a fresh peach in the middle of August. "

Farm markets are a safe bet at Kaiser's northern California base, where local

produce is easily available year-round, but Maring noted that the program has

expanded to 24 locations around the United States. The company pays only for

whatever government permits are required, he said.

There are innovative programs elsewhere, Wanjek reported:

-- Healthy workplace canteens like the one at Husky Injection Molding Systems

Ltd in Ontario, Canada, where red meat and deep-fried items are banned and three

helpings of vegetables come with every meal;

-- Training for street-food vendors in hygiene and food safety in South Africa,

Tanzania and India;

-- Subsidized meal vouchers for use at restaurants and food shops in Brazil,

Hungary, Romania, France, Britain, Sweden, India, Lebanon and China.

VICIOUS CYCLE

The United Nations has been interested in worker nutrition for decades, but

until now it focused on poor countries where the issue was getting enough food

and clean water to employees, rather than heading off obesity.

" The whole issue of obesity, how it affected workers' health and productivity

and how the workplace could become one of the ways of reaching people to combat

obesity, had not been explored, " the Geneva-based labor organization's

Salter said in answer to e-mailed questions.

Wanjek, himself a rail-thin 6-footer who makes a pot of soup each week and

packages it to eat at work, described a vicious cycle based on poor nutrition in

the workplace:

Poor nutrition leads to poor health, bringing on a lack of energy, strength and

coordination and a lower learning potential, making for a poorly qualified job

pool with lower productivity, resulting in a loss of competitiveness, higher

business costs and lower investment and economic growth. In the end this brings

about lower wages and then, again, poor nutrition for workers, Wanjek wrote.

At a recent Washington restaurant lunch, Wanjek had turtle soup with sherry,

crispy fried fish and coleslaw and a few bites of sorbet for dessert.

Asked what place this kind of rich meal has in his examination of food at work,

he demurred: " I have nothing to say about these expense-account lunches except

that they eventually do you in, I'm sure. "