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Japan Imposes "Fine On Fat"
An anonymous reader writes "A recently-introduced law in Japan requires all businesses to have mandatory obesity checks (video link) for all their employees and employees' family members over the age of 40, CNN reports. If the employee or family member is deemed obese, and does not lose the extra fat soon, their employer faces large fines. The legislated upper limit for the waistline is 33.5" for men, and 35.5" for women. Should America adopt universal health insurance, could we live to see the same kind of individual health regulations imposed on us by the government? By comparison, the average waistline in America in 2005 was 39 inches for men, 37 inches for women."
Does this apply to foreign workers? For instance, if I were to go work in Japan for a year or two after I'm 40, would my employer be fined if I didn't shrink my 37 to a 33.5?
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
How can you have a single upper-limit on waist sizes? Are all people in Japan the same height or are short people allowed to be fatter than tall ones?
And how is the employer really responsible for their employees' weight? OK sure, there's going to be a bit of correllation between the general health attitude at your job and your own weight and from what I understand there's more of a culture for this thing in Japan but it still seems like a big leap to make in what a company is responsible for and subsequently what an employee has to answer to his employer about. Can constantly fat people be fired for costing their company too much in fines?
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
I never understood why this was so unpopular. We tax the beejebus out of cigarretes because it is an easy way for politicians to raise taxes without making everyone mad. Eating tons of junk food over the course of your life isnt much better than smoking a pack a day.
I'm not saying I support a tax on junk food, but I cant see how people can support taxing lower income folks who go through a pack a day but not this.
Surely that counts out virtually most athletes in sports such as Weightlifting, Rugby Union, Shotput, Discus and many many more sports in which the atheletes are likely to be semi pro and have to have a 9 - 5 to help support themselves financially. Let alone Sumo Wrestling which is what football is to us Brits! Thats real football by the way to all you yanks :-p. You can be very healthy and very muscular and have a waist well above 33.5, I know a guy whose a semi professional Rugby Union player who has a 42 inch waist and a 55 inch chest, and is fitter than 99% of people on the street! It should be done on proper BMI (Body Mass Index), not including just height and weight as most do, but a real BMI includes skin fold measurements and takes into account percentage body fat and needs to be carried out by a qualified professional for the results to be accurate. If your gonna introduce a law which has monetary fines attatched to it at least make it fair!
You'd have to send him to Japan first, which would be prohibitively expensive.
I'm more interested in what this does for Sumo wrestlers. Will they now be fired unless they go on a diet?
Most countries with national health programs (mine included) don't have any restrictions on what you can do, eat, smoke, shoot up, jump off of or have sex with. As you point out, one country where the system does generally involve penalties for certain behaviour or conditions is the private system in the US.
Shaquille O'Neil is not exactly fat at 7'1" and 325, but he has a BMI of 31.6 -- well into the "obese" range. A 5'2" woman would have to weigh 173 pounds to have the same BMI as Shaq -- and I know damn well that 173 and 5'2 is rolling fat.
So tell us how useful the BMI is as a gauge of obesity again.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
You say "good genes". I say: "bad math". Body fat is subject to the universal laws of thermodynamics. If you decrease your calorie consumption, you will have less energy left over to store as fat. The overall trend in the USA (or probably all of the western world) is towards unhealthy diets. I have what might be called a "superfood" diet and hover at a trim 30-32" waist size, even with what I must admit is too little exercise. I sport a six-pack and ripped muscles--its all diet. I'm down from about a 36" waist from when I realized I was getting too old for a 20-something diet full of pizza and cheeseburgers. Since beginning my superfood diet (approximately 50% of calories by fruit, 30% by legumes and nuts, 10% by grain, 10% by dairy), I have noticed that the healthy foods I choose have been systematically replaced in the grocery store by less healthy alternatives. For example, at my local Albertson's, whole grain cereals have been replaced by boxes of sugar-coated junk. "Regular" juice is replaced by "pulp free". Etc. Etc. Start a healthy diet and track the availability of the healthy foods you eat in the grocery store. You will see that your choices deteriorate over time. Soon you have to switch to "healthy" stores with elevated prices. Rather than tax employers, the state should tax unhealthy food alternatives. The cost of the unhealthy diet will be passed to the directly to the consumer where it belongs. To save money, people will switch to healthier alternatives that cost less. Right now, the most expensive foods in terms of cost per calorie, are the most healthy foods.
Just callin' it like I see it.