IBM Granted Your-Paychecks-Are-What-You-Eat Patent

theodp writes "On IBM's Smarter Planet, at least as envisioned in Big Blue's recently-granted patent for 'providing consumers with incentives for healthy eating habits', the FDA will team up with employers and insurers to determine your final paycheck based upon what you eat. IBM explains that whether a given food item is considered healthy may vary based on a number of factors, including 'individual health histories, family health histories, food intake, exercise routines, medications, and other health related factors', and may even be time dependent ('incentives are greater for consumption of a particular food item during a designated lunch time and less for consumption of the particular food item during other periods of time'). Before being issued, IBM's patent request languished for ten years and was only granted after a Patent Examiner's rejection was overturned on appeal. IBM CEO Sam Palmisano has been a cheerleader for pay-for-monitored-healthy-eating on a national level, which seems to be neatly aligned with the goals of his fellow CEOs on the Business Rountable, who told President Obama in 2009, 'It's very important that we don't have a government [healthcare] plan competing with a private plan and finding out that our employees or the citizens in general could go to a plan that doesn't have the same incentives and requirements and behavioral characteristics to make sure that they do the right things long term'."

Comments

How do you determine healthy food?

[InterestingFella]

In my opinion, the official food guide pyramids are unhealthy in many countries. They consist mostly of fast carbs. Those aren't that good to you, but I understand that they were good choice before, especially in countries with long winters.

You know what rice, pasta, noodles, potatoes, grain, pizza and similar have in common? They have, historically, been food of low class people. They were what even the people with not so much money could get. While good food like meat, fish and similar are still pricier than the foods with fast carbs, they are generally available to everyone thanks to increase in our technological knowledge and means of mass producing food.

This is why I find it mind blowing that the official food guide pyramids still promote fast carbs so much. They should not be your main source of energy. They are needed, but not at the amounts people eat them today. The ratio should be more like 33%/33%/33%, or even have more fat and protein than carbs. Pizza isn't bad because it contains fat, it's bad because it contains mixture of high amount of fast carbs and fat, and generally not that much vitamins. If people lowered the amount of carbs they take then they would be both more healthier and more lean.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[thomasw_lrd]

Red meat and chicken is pretty affordable, but fish is not. And let's face it, red meat isn't really good for you either. Too much fat. At least according to studies.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

I lost 60 pounds in 6 months on the "Eat correctly, not so much fast carbs you moron" diet.

Basically, I eliminated the refined sugars (HFCS is one of the fastest carbs in the universe) and then removing the other low end ones like rice, pasta, bread, noodles, potato, corn, wheat, most fruits. The hardest thing to cut was wheat gluten; they put that shit in everything!

So what do I eat now? Like you said, mostly fish and fowl, with some red meat in there. I also eat liver on a monthly basis for the super-dense protein.

" If people lowered the amount of carbs they take then they would be both more healthier and more lean."

However, if "everybody" did that, then we wouldn't have nearly enough food. Note the percentage of your diet that the pyramid says should be cheap-carbs and then look at the percentage of US food that comes from wheat and corn.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Joce640k]

I find it mind blowing that the official food guide pyramids still promote fast carbs so much.

The official pyramids aren't based on what's good for you, they were produced after the second world war when some foods were plentiful and others were scarce. The idea was to get people to eat what was most available.

There's also reason to believe that certain agricultural representatives had an 'influence' in what's in them.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[elsurexiste]

I can't remember who said "Everyone has an opinion. But we are interested in knowledge.". It surely applies here. ;)

Why is pizza bad? Is it bad at all? I don't know. I sure have an idea that it is less healthy than other options, but I'll be honest and say that I really don't know. That's why people study Nutrition at Uni. I do know that the food pyramid takes into account that fats, even though you must consume them or risk malnutrition, you should eat very little of them, especially if you are sedentary, because you won't burn the huge amount of calories you would ingest.

Trust these people, they studied all those years so you don't have to! ;)

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[elrous0]

The short answer is whatever happens to be trendy at the time. One year, carbs will be all the rage. The next, they'll be bad.

Remember, your paycheck reflects how well you obey, citizen!

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[hedwards]

Pizza isn't inherently bad. It's a bit high on protein, but other than that it's perfectly fine and easily included in a balanced diet. Cheese, tomato, oregano, crust, those are all things that fit well in a well balanced diet. Where you start to get in trouble is with the toppings, pepperoni, sausage and such.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[elrous0]

You can lose weight on almost any diet that restricts calories in some way. Not to downplay your weight loss, but people have been losing weight on every sort of diet imaginable for decades. The trick is *keeping* it off, of course.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[InterestingFella]

I do know that the food pyramid takes into account that fats, even though you must consume them or risk malnutrition, you should eat very little of them, especially if you are sedentary, because you won't burn the huge amount of calories you would ingest.

Actually, fats are easy to burn and they burn more healthier too (slowly, but you feel full for much longer). The problem is when you mix lots of fat with lots of carbs. Fats can't burn before your body has burned fast carbs. At the same time, fast carbs make you want more food sooner than fat does. In the end you still have some fat left that would had got time to burn if it wasn't for the carbs. This is also why pizza is bad. Not because it contains fat, but because it contains high amount of both carbs and fat.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[hedwards]

My personal favorite diet is getting enough sleep and drinking some tea. Took off 30# like that and it's never come back. Plus, I have plenty of excuses to go to bed early and get plenty of sleep.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[elrous0]

Thanks, but I'd rather have the chemical preservatives than to take my chances with all the nasty bacteria and parasites that come with spoiled food. And I'd rather have the pesticides, engineered crops, etc. than to deal with the starvation that would result if every farmer suddenly decided to go organic.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[hedwards]

That right there is one of the problems. It's one thing to give a bonus for employees that take care of themselves in general and quite another to pay for specific methods of doing it.

As much as I do think that businesses should encourage healthy eating and clean living, I really don't think this sort of direct approach is really appropriate. If they want to help their workers they ought to be nudging them towards it. Making it as convenient as possible to access healthy snacks, subsidizing exercise programs and possibly encouraging people to use the stairs.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Tharsman]

My wife is a diabetes researcher. She tells me all the carbs we eat (in the way we consume them in the United States) are, indeed, killing us. Ironically, I asked her if there are any studies on this, and she says there are not (that she knows off, it's not easy to get a grant to "prove" eating bread is unhealthy) but it’s visible in other non-focused studies and existing knowledge of how the body treats sugars.

Your daily carb intake should consist of fruit and vegetables, not breads or pastas.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[khundeck]

I barely want to point this out, but, what's "affordable" has a lot to do with where you geographically live.

    Fishing == rivers, oceans (ie. coasts, islands,..)
    Red Meat / Chicken == land (ie. farms, mountain herds, ..)

What's missing in our 'food equation' is self-production and high-valued local produce. Whatever is good/sustainable for your region is what you should consider consuming. Reliance on cheap/subsidized imported food just won't add-up long-term.

KPH

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[mcgrew]

As noted in TFS (TFA is firewalled off here), "whether a given food item is considered healthy may vary based on a number of factors, including 'individual health histories, family health histories, food intake, exercise routines, medications, and other health related factors".

The guidelines say we're eating too much salt and we're all going to die of heart disease and high blood pressure, but there's no heart disease at all in my family, and my own blood pressure has always measured either normal or low -- and I eat a LOT of salt.

It annoys the hell out of me. I'm genetically thin, and everything is low fat, low calorie, diet. Damn it, I'm too thin, not too fat. One size does not fit all!

My grandmother was born in 1903, back in the day they cooked with lard and butter and ate eggs and bacon every morning. Her doctor told her that if she didn't get her cholesterol down she was going to die. Well, the doctor died. So she got a new doctor who told her the same thing, then he died, too. Five doctors later she finally did die -- she fell down and broke her hip in 2003.

If you want to diet and exersize, more power to you. But keep your goddamned nanny state micromanagement out of my kitchen. I'm going to die from something, it might as well be eating unhealthy foods and having fun.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[hideouspenguinboy]

Can you prove you didn't just make that up? Because I'm pretty sure you did.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[brusk]

That's true only to a limited extent. If it takes more inputs to produce a kg of food locally than it does to produce it further away and transport it, the latter may still be the better choice. I live in a temperate region with cold winters. Fruit such as apples and berries grows well here, but it all ripens at the same time (summer and fall), so it makes sense to preserve it (drying, freezing, canning, jams, not to mention wine, etc.). In a warmer climate, the same fruits can be produced year-round. So it makes sense for those regions to ship fresh fruit to my area when it's not in season here, and my area to ship preserved fruit to them. That's actually the most economical and energy-efficient use of resource.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[AdamnSelene]

Not to be glib, but [citation needed]. At least in the US, the food advice handed out by the USDA is generally considered to be accurate to the current information available to scientists. Everything I've personally seen contradicting it has been merely bare assertions without citation or data, or else points to a study done by a clearly biased group or individual. If you've got something substantive, I'd love to see it, as this is a special interest of mine.

Nope, the USDA recommendations are subject to an intense amount of lobbying by the large food companies. Anyone who thinks that government scientists are free to speak their minds hasn't worked in government, and unfortunately their scientific research is largely ignored or reshaped by economic and political forces when it comes time to make policy recommendations (see Reagan, R., under whose administration ketchup was famously considered a vegetable in school lunches).

If you really want to eat healthy, and wanted to eat what the science tells you is best, you might start with the research by Dr T. Colin Campbell and Dr Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr. who did large-scale studies of the effects of eating processed crap vs. whole foods. See for example their books The China Study and PlanEat for citations, if you want to understand the evidence and know what to eat.

For the history of this, I recommend the anthropologist Sid Mintz who wrote Sweetness and Power, a history of sugar. In it he traces the shift in the British diet from healthy, farm-based foods to sugar-based foods and shows how that shift in diet was inextricable from the growth of cities and factories during the Industrial Revolution. In other words, he shows how the political economy of sugar has led to our present sugar and carb based diet. Unlike Campbell and Esselstyn, Mintz won't tell you what to eat, but he will tell you why everyone wants to sell you processed crap masquerading as food.

The upshot, however, is simple. Eat no-to-little processed, sugar, dairy and high-carb foods; eat only a little meat and some fish; eat a lot of protein-rich legumes, nuts, vegetables and whole grains. Drink mostly water; avoid sugary soft drinks, fruit cocktails and even too much juice. And cook for yourself; restaurants suck (from a healthy eating perspective).

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Karmashock]

Human civilization was built on carbs.

Wheat.
Rice.
Potatoes.
Maize.

Huge portions of the planet would starve to death without it. And if we tried to shift just the first world over to it, costs would inflate so high that you probably couldn't afford to eat that way either. Even in the first world, the majority of our calories come from carbs. We simply couldn't feed billions of people on anything else.

Carbs are cheap. We can produce them in bulk at low cost. They can be stored in some cases for years very easily. Carbs feed the world and have fed the world for thousands of years.

It isn't carbs that makes people fat. It's the lack of exercise. Just move every so often. Take up a sport. Something. And then you can eat mash potatoes every night and chase it with gravy. Just burn some calories.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[brusk]

Actually the first official food pyramid was in the 1970s, and the USDA no longer uses that model, having replaced it this year with MyPlate. Yes, there are still major problems with it, and it represents an imperfect compromise between the more abstract idea of getting certain nutrients and the more concrete idea of eating certain foods, but if more Americans followed it they would certainly be healthier.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[ChaoticCoyote]

I live surrounded on three sides by ocean.

Fish is hideously expensive, as compared to chiecken, beef, and pork.

Same thign for fresh fruit -- I live in a state (Florida) that produces lots of fruit, but the stores have incredibly high prices.

I know people on Food stamps (a large percentage of the U.S.population now, btw) -- and they can't AFFORD to eat healthy. There's a reason poor people are fat -- bad diet, because good food is too expensive.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[eno2001]

This is 1.5 hours long, but this man speaks the truth: sugar (fast carbs) is poison.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

The rest of this is addressed to anyone interested enough to read it:

I can also attest to the massive changes in my health after eliminating simple carbs and going for complex carbs (meaning more fiber as well) in my diet in 2003. Weight loss wasn't even a goal as I didn't even think I was near the upper end of "healthy" for my size at the time (6' and 185 lbs. at that time. I have been consistently 155 since developing a new relationship with food). The changes I made were to combat reflux. That worked. No purple pill or surgery for me and the reflux is gone.

A lot of the illnesses in western culture are clearly linked to the western diet (read Michael Pollan's book An Eater's Manifesto). The western diet is far too focused on simple/fast carbs. I believe this is largely a self feeding addiction (I believed that long before seeing the video linked above but it's nice to have a doctor confirm this). The hardest part of changing how you eat is making it to the point where your sense of taste very literally changes.

Believe it or not, if you eat the standard American diet, it's likely that your taste buds lack much sensitivity. I would not have believed it if I didn't experience it myself. Eating all of those heavily processed foods with artificial flavors that beat the hell out of your taste buds is akin to staring at a bright light for hours and then going into a darkened gallery with the most beautiful art... that you cannot see until your eyes readjust. Same thing with food. Processed and artificially flavored food is like the bright light. You aren't really tasting real food when you encounter it. That's why many of the healthier choices "lack flavor" or even "taste bad". Try going for a month without eating anything but fruits, vegetables, and high quality cuts of meat and poultry, but being heavy on the vegetables. Also avoid all sugared drinks. Just drink water or tea. I guarantee that you'll open up a whole new world of flavors and what you used to think tasted great, will be too intense.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Joce640k]

Most foods on the market are contaminated with chemicals

Um, all food is made of 100% chemicals.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[sabs]

Because Americans don't know how to cook vegetables. Most americans veggies taste bad, and not tasty. People are raised with their mothers having done horrid things to vegetables, and now they won't eat them.

Add to that, that Veggies are EXPENSIVE, and you get a double edged sword.

You want to improve dietary health in america, bring back Home Ec in school. Teach everyone how to cook, at least the staples. But if all you eat are canned veggies, you're going to hate veggies.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[FooAtWFU]

Can't afford healthy food, hmm? Let's see. Lentils can be had for something like $2.50 a pound. The good kind of lentils. Organic. Red kidney beans can be had for even less. Oatmeal for breakfast costs mere cents. You still need some more leafy green stuff and the like, sure, but if you can afford chicken or beef, you can afford lentils instead.

I suspect cost alone is not why people are opting for the highly-refined-flour based "fast carbs".

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[michelcolman]

Yes, that's precisely why this IBM patent is so bad imho. People will be forced to eat what other people, often very badly informed, consider to be healthy while it may actually be bad for you to eat that stuff. Most companies using such a system would immediately start giving penalties for fat and calories because everyone "knows" that they are bad. O, and anything containing cholesterol, obviously. Never mind recent scientific discoveries changing things from the "good" to the "bad" column or vice versa all the time, they'll take decades to trickle down to the idiot who gets to decide what you should eat today.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

When I married my wife, who spent her childhood in Uzbekistan during the Soviet Union, I was at first shocked by her tendency to leave a pot of soup, remains of a roast chicken, or platter of pasta on the counter overnight, then start picking at it the next morning. surely, I thought, this practice is unsafe and dangerous. She looked at me like I was fucking nuts. Indeed, it's been a decade now and we have never had a problem with food spoilage. Ther ARE certain foods that even my wife will treat carefully, but I have come to realize that we Americans have been instilled with a strange fear of the germs which are lurking everywhere just waiting to kill us.

Above all, it makes very little sense to adulterate my food with preservative chemicals which, as far as I can tell, are protecting be from no actual problem.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[houstonbofh]

I see someone isn't aware that they recently reworked the FDA Food Guide Pyramid

Apparently, neither have you. It now directs to http://www.choosemyplate.gov/ and after several minutes I can not figure out what the heck it is recommending!

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

no, ALL sugar... or even more broadly...

ALL FOOD CONTRIBUTES TO YOUR EVENTUAL DEATH

Have a nice day

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[nattt]

Since when was good saturated fat in meat bad for you?

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[arkane1234]

No, that's what you were taught.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[arkane1234]

reminds me of when I grew up, and I'd watch my mom open a can of peas or a mix of veggies and she'd plop it into water and boil it... as she was cooking a frozen salisbury steak tray. Variations of that were replacing salisbury steak tray with frozen lasagna tray, or get all wild and crazy... order pizza.
The veggies were because "dad likes his fiber".

I think the 'baby boomer' generation and the impending hippy generation kinda sent the whole food idea helter-skelter. I'm laughed at by most family members because I like things like sushi, roasted asparagus, soy milk, & buffalo burgers. Odd.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[voidphoenix]

And let's face it, red meat isn't really good for you either. Too much fat. At least according to studies.

Citation needed.

I'm not just being snarky. Try this: Meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies evaluating the association of saturated fat with cardiovascular disease.

TLDR: Eating lots of saturated fat DOESN'T INCREASE RISK of coronary heart disease, stroke or cardiovascular disease.

Read Good Calories, Bad Calories or the newer one, Why We Get Fat for a good treatment of the science behind nutrition and health. For something more directly discussing what to eat, Protein Power is pretty good. It includes sections discussing the science of the diet and why it works.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

I changed my diet completely about a year ago. I do eat lentils, red beans, black beans, tofu, kale, spinach, green leaf lettuce, whole grains, soy cheese, tempeh, seitan, TVP, and so on.

I'm here to tell you that it's not cheap to keep a diet like that going when you have multiple mouths to feed. It also takes considerable preparation time in the kitchen, which is where I suspect most people really start to give up.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[MHolmesIV]

In the late part of the second world war, the US did a study on partial starvation. The study probably couldn't be repeated nowadays due to ethical concerns, but it gave a lot of interesting data. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Starvation_Experiment

Among the conclusions from the study was the confirmation that prolonged semi-starvation produces significant increases in depression, hysteria and hypochondriasis as measured using the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) (a standardized test administered during the experimental period). Indeed, most of the subjects experienced periods of severe emotional distress and depression. There were extreme reactions to the psychological effects during the experiment including self-mutilation (one subject amputated three fingers of his hand with an axe, though the subject was unsure if he had done so intentionally or accidentally). Participants exhibited a preoccupation with food, both during the starvation period and the rehabilitation phase

Basically, it's very difficult to make diets work. If you want to lose weight, you need to increase your calorie burning, and keep your calorie consumption at reasonable levels. Restricted calorie diets will just make you food-focused, and as soon as you stop, you'll return to your genetically predisposed weight.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Bucky24]

I also found out that store bought eggs will last about two weeks in the fridge, but locally raised eggs will last about a month on the counter. That really scares me!

I'd think that's because the store-bought eggs probably traveled in a truck across the country from wherever they were grown to the distribution plant, then out to the store. Most of that time without refrigeration. So they also last a month, just when they get to you they've already used up a lot of that time in transit.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[na1led]

You must not have any kids, because you make it sound all too easy. It takes my wife the whole day to do her shopping, especially when you have a 2 year old, and you have to travel 40 min. one way. I'm sure we could make our time a little more efficient but my point was that "It's difficult to eat organic these days". It's more expensive, and it takes more time to prepare. If we were farmers this would be no problem. There is nothing I hate most, is seeing retired people with no kids, who have their homes all neat and landscaped, eating only healthy food, and wonder why we don't live like them!

I knew it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok.. it's gonna be real unpopular to say. And fairly ugly... But it's the truth.

The nazis would be proud of what america has become. And what we're turning into.
We came up with ways to dehumanize people they never even dreamed of. :(

Re:I knew it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would anyone be unhappy with a true statement? What right does someone have to say what I can and cannot eat because I pay them to pay my medical bills? I find this in the same regard as the fireman who have to sign a contract saying they won't smoke, or the seatbelt laws that you pay 200-300 dollars in fines for not wearing a seatbelt. My personal life is somewhere other people have no business being.. I don't remove the toys from your kids happy meals, I don't walk up behind you and tell you that a slap battle with your kid is child abuse.. so kindly don't do it to me.

Re:I knew it.

[Opportunist]

Actually, it reminded me more of something that really happened in the former East European countries.

Every time something went low in stock, suddenly the whole propaganda apparatus was afloat with reasons why eating or using this product would be bad for you. Coffee? Yuck, increases your blood pressure and pushes you into your grave. Meat? Unhealthy to the max, it's a killer. Butter? Well, use it sparingly and eat a lot more bread.

I kid you not when I tell you the first thing that came in mind is something like this. Now add things like declaring ketchup a vegetable to save money on kids' cafeteria food and some other ludicrous ideas and you end up with something not much different from what we could watch in the eastern European countries not that long ago.

Re:I knew it.

[tverbeek]

The Nazis also did other evil things, in addition to the attempted extermination of the Jews. In fact, several nations declared war on them before they knew that the German state was doing that. The mindset that you have to go out and commit genocide before your actions qualify as "dehumanizing" sets the bar for that rather dangerously high.

More patent abusrdity

[Digambaranath]

This is yet another case showing that you can get a patent for absolutely anything.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Scary

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

Hey IBM! How about you stick to making computers and software, and I'll decide what I want to eat, okay?

IBM's Patent Submissions Process

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a quick reminder that IBM's patent process is focused on numbers, specifically being #1 year after year (because now it would be news if we weren't #1).

Also, in order to advance in IBM you have to participate in patenting, and IBM pays $$$ per patent, so it's the only real bonus system at IBM.

Even more important, IBM has dozens (if not hundreds) of independent patent review boards, each focusing on a specific, narrow area of expertise. Some are very rigorous, some are very lax. That's just the nature of the business.

Don't assume that every IBM patent you see is tied to a product plan or even a gleam in some executive's eye (as would be the case at a smaller firm).

So...

[Bruce McBruce]

In essence, they just patented a concept of deciding that thin employees get paid more and fat employees get paid less, and indeed judging their personal lives? Sounds like they're cornering the supermodel engineer market.

Stop Using Stress as a Policy Tool

[florescent_beige]

It is consistent with recent history that U.S. leadership believes they are entitled to mandate people's behaviour. If they really wanted to make people's lives better they would re-think their belief that fear and greed are the only two dimensions of human motivation. Fear being the problem at hand.

Fear of unemployment, fear of China, fear of Islam, fear of the black man, fear of Mexicans, fear of government, fear of the competition, fear of young people, fear of old people, fear of liberals, fear of bombs, fear of crowds, fear of complacency, fear of men wearing fezzes, fear of sexuality, fear of strange.

People eat comfort food because it makes them feel better. Americans feel bad. Maybe American leadership could make it a priority to help their citizens to have happy lives and stop it with the forcing people to do that they say.

Re:Stop Using Stress as a Policy Tool

[locallyunscene]

This is the guise fascism takes in America; outsourcing the abrogation of rights to private industries as an end run around the constitution.

Wow, creepy.

[Feyshtey]

This whole concept just makes my skin crawl. Start with the thought that this cant really be implimented unless someone (IBM? FDA?) knows exactly what you eat at any given moment, and it just gets more and more twilight zone from there.

Re:How will the system work?

[Kazymyr]

They are probably talking about tracking your purchases probably based on some personally identifiable information (credit cards, store reward cards etc). And assume you eat what you purchase.

No seat belt for you...No insurance for injuries..

[deck]

I am fine if you don't wear your seat belt and maybe the law shouldn't be that way. But please don't ask to have your injuries caused by not wearing it covered. The auto insurance company I am with does just that. If you don't wear a seat belt then they pay a small percentage of the medical and don't cover anything that is obviously a result of not wearing the seat belt (like being ejected from the vehicle and bouncing down the road). It is a business proposition between my insurance company and myself. To keep my rates lower, I wear a seat belt. And if the law should state something, it should be that insurance companies and individuals are not liable for injuries incurred because a seat belt is not worn.

Prior Art?

[Esion Modnar]

Meaning, of course, that guy with the "Will Work For Food" sign.

Irony Bomb

[Anonymous Coward]

I've worked a combined total of 8 years at IBM as a contractor over the course of my career. The cafeteria in their 500 building in Research Triangle Park is infamously bad. Notorious, even. Their idea of saying they have healthy foods is having a salad bar. Most of the food served at IBM is below the quality of what I remember eating in a public school cafeteria as a kid, and that was pretty bad. The overwhelming majority of what they sell there is low grade cheeseburgers & fries, pizza, fried chicken, and sub sandwiches.

Over the course of time, I've seen the quality of the food go down, the healthy choices reduced, and the quality (and headcount) of the cafeteria staff continue to shrink.

I did complain once about the guy who operated the grill, who sneezed into his gloved hands and then continued serving food without changing his gloves. This guy hates vegetarians, as evidenced by the abuse he dishes out on the veggie burgers. Sure, they are on the menu. But I defy you to eat one. It's served in a consistency not unlike dried codfish, before you soak it in lye to make lutefisk. Anyway, complaints go nowhere. The slob still works there. He still makes unhealthy food, badly, and uncleanly.

If IBM wants to be taken seriously on being interested in the health of its workers, it needs to loosen up the purse strings a bit and get a vendor into their campus cafeterias that will provide healthy food options (and make it *harder* to buy unhealthy food there!)

Re:really?

[hedwards]

Not really, whether you care to admit it or not, fat people get sick more frequently and end up spending more days off work. They're more likely to have diabetes, sleep apnea, depression and other illnesses as a result of packing more weight than is healthy. The health effects of being obese are well documented.

The main question is how do you decide who is and isn't obese. I always get crap during phone appointments for my weight, but with my body frame size, I can't get down to the weight they want without starving. And even the time I was starving, in a very literal way, I still didn't quite get there.

Personally, I find it incredibly troubling that advocates for the obese keep suggesting that there's some validity to making that decision. They definitely have a point that being obese doesn't make one a bad person, but it's just plain disgusting to enable the obese by validating all manner of absurd rationalization.

Anybody that's capable of keeping up with the maintenance plan that's often required to get weight reduction surgery shouldn't have been obese in the first place. Because it's not a particularly special diet and it's not less difficult that the diet that would have prevented it in the first place.

Work != Labor

[clyde_cadiddlehopper]

My brother is over 50 and a baggage handler for a major airline. On his feet, lifting, walking, on the move continuously several hours a day. He's had no flab ... until this year. I saw him in November with a bulge around the middle. He had put on 30 pounds. "What happened?" "Desk job." Employers wake up! You are not the innocent victim of the obesity epidemic, you are a primary contributor. Every job description must include some activity other than "sit in chair, click mouse, press keys, answer telephone." Put labor back in work and your employees will get more work done and cost less in the long run.

Re:Work != Labor

[digitalaudiorock]

I hear a lot of this sort of thing regarding desk jobs lately, but to me the answer is simple: Regardless of what job you have you simply must work out, and while you don't have to work out an insane amount, you must work out on a regular weekly schedule and stick to it...period.

I'm a programmer and have NO activity during work. However for the last (almost) 20 years I've made sure to do 20 minutes of very strenuous aerobics twice a week, and two days of extensive weight lifting (on day of leg/abs stuff and one day of upper body weights). Except on the very rare occasion that I'm seriously ill, I never miss that schedule. Guess what, at 58 I have about 9.5% body fat...I can press more than my weight comfortably and do like 85 push-ups, and in general, pretty much feel like a 25 year old.

Sure, more activity at work will help keep weight off, just like walking helps keep weight off. However neither one gives you a real cardiovascular workout or any real substitute for weight resistant exercise. Don't get me started on the whole walking thing...the recent trend where everyone tells you to do a lot of walking in my view is not helping. The main excuse given for not exercising is time, and walking time-wise is the worst bang for the buck you can get, and at best may help you shed a little weight.

There just is no replacement for real exercise.

Re:Work != Labor

[clyde_cadiddlehopper]

Why is it an employer's job (no pun intended) to make sure we exercise?

Why is it an employers' right to pass along healthcare costs of employees that they require to be sedentary 40+ hours a week?

But that line of reasoning is pretty flabby (pun intended) on either side of the argument. Let's raise awareness that fitness is a system problem: (Caloried consumed - Calories burned) / ~3500 = 1 pound of body weight gained or lost. If you want to reduce healthcare costs, one part of the solution will be to redesign work to include motion.

In Capitalist America...

[tverbeek]

What's most remarkable about this is that people who would wail and howl about the government directing you what to eat and when, apparently think that it would be appropriate for the corporations most people depend upon for employment to do so.

Re:No seat belt for you...No insurance for injurie

[brusk]

But the public still pays a cost, since the ambulance is still going to take you to the hospital and the ER is still going to treat you if you don't wear your seat belt. And you might need to be buried in a pauper's grave. If you can't pay for those expenses, they fall on the whole community.

Simplest and best way to do this

[gurps_npc]

Is to have a company cafeteria that gives away the healthy food free and charges you normal prices for the junk food.

No need to adjust the paycheck - that is just stupid. You end up giving 1/3 to 1/2 the benefit to the government via taxes, and have to institute a complex tracking system.

HIPPA violation?

[vlm]

Isn't this a huge HIPPA violation?

I personally don't care. However, I'll tell all you /.ers that my son is horribly allergic to gluten protein in wheat, soy proteins, and casein proteins. Yes he had a Very rough time as a little kid but as a seemingly last ditch effort the gastroenterologist, or whatever the F he's called, ordered some blood tests and basically told us he'd never seen a kid with that high of allergen antibody levels, and more or less never feed him wheat, soy, or milk products again and he'll probably live. Actually after cutting that out of his diet, he thrived, not just "survived". This was a last ditch effort because the medical industrial complex makes money selling anti-steroidal drugs and exploratory surgery and endless consultations, not making money by just telling people "don't eat the stuff you're allergic to anymore, mmm kay?" To say I'm pissed off about the whole situation is an understatement. To misquote someone, I wish the medical industrial complex had but one neck, so I could throttle it.

Interestingly enough, when we cut out the bad stuff, the health of my wife and I improved measurably and dramatically, blood tests for cholesterol and our weight and other stuff. I later find out we're eating what is trendily called a "paleo-diet" or whatever, but aside from all the bookselling and Oprah interviews it just boils down to, if your ancestors ate it 10Kyrs ago, you should eat the closest equivalent. Lots of baked fish, meat and veggie stir frys (without soy sauce) lots of salads, which if you know what you're doing are extremely tasty, etc. The grill gets a good workout. Kabobs. BBQ chicken on a salad. That kind of food. Not so much bread and pasta and pretty much anything that comes out of a freezer box ready to be heated up.

Anyway the point is I really don't need some idiotic B-school dropout HR drone arguing with me, about how I should be paid less, because my son isn't eating enough whole wheat and tofu with a big glass of milk, and I'm not interested in sending endless medical records to HR, and endless permission slips, and just the whole bureaucratic nightmare. And if I buy food at a farmers market I'm somehow to be treated as an enemy of the state. Or I have to attend "food confession" where the "dietary priest" either hears my dining sins or grabs my fun parts, can't remember which.

Re:poor workplace environment leads to poor eating

[Jiro]

This should be modded up.

Companies like to put the burden on employees. Never on themselves. Not having lots of mandatory overtime is sure to increase the health of the employees, but *that* is one method of health-promotion they will never use. Instead they want to work the employees more and then take away their overtime pay on the grounds that the employees don't eat healthy (which was caused by the long working hours).

I call bullshit.

[Feyshtey]

I just checked the weekly print add for a local grocery.

Chicken -- $1.88/lb for skinless and boneless breasts. Broccoli -- $1.12/lb Bread -- $0.98/loaf

That's a relatively healthy meal for 3 people for $4. How would you eat worse food for that amount?

The problem is not the cost. It's the lazy people that cant be bothered to actually cook, and use fast food as the convenient scapegoat.

Re:I call bullshit.

[arkane1234]

Is cooking that brief period between work and sleep where you grab whats in front of you and masticate it before the sleep phase?

Re:I call bullshit.

[Feyshtey]

Seriously?

Ok, if your idea of healthy is that every meal must be prepared from hormone free, free range alaskan salmon that were tucked in and sung a bedtime song every night, served with kiwi grown from wild hormone free hand-picked elk droppings, I guess I just cant argue with you.

Re:I call bullshit.

[GospelHead821]

The problem is as much one of time and education as of finances. I am studying nutrition and know a lot of recipes that allow me to both to stretch my grocery budget and eat healthful foods. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't have time to cook good food nor do they really understand how plentiful their options are. That ignorance leads people into the "fast food trap," I think. At least it tastes pretty good. Better than eating beans and rice all the time, right? Except with the right seasonings - which you can stretch out for months - beans and rice are pretty darned tasty.

I watched a news report on the affordability of healthful foods and the woman was complaining that she could get two cheeseburgers for $1.50 or buy a bunch of broccoli for $1.50. The news report didn't elaborate though and nobody explained to the poor woman that the two cheeseburgers are one poor meal while the broccoli could be stretched for several meals and mixed with other foods that would make for more nutritious eating for about the same amount of money per meal.

Or similarly, there's a charity called Feed My Starving Children that buys (admittedly in bulk) dehydrated vegetables, rice, chicken-flavoured nutrient powder, and soy protein then blends them together for essentially complete nutrition for 24 cents per serving. I'm not suggesting that anybody eat nothing but reconstituted rations but if it's possible to do that for 24 cents, certainly there must be ways for people in industrialized countries to prepare nutritious foods for $1.00 or $2.00 per serving.

Re:I call bullshit.

[jimbolauski]

Most people on food stamps are working an have a household income in the rage of 20-30k, fast food is a frequently purchased by people at that income level. My sister in law is on food stamps and takes her 4 kids to McDonalds 2 or 3 times a week, she could be using that money to buy healthier food to prepare at home but chooses not to because she is lazy. Cost is not the determining factor when most people like her make food decisions, her reasoning is why waste an hour preparing a meal when a meal the same price takes no time at all.

Re:I call bullshit.

[jimbolauski]

Most of the poor live near where they work, my sister in law is not exception living a mere 3 minutes walking time from her job as a hostess. McDonalds is not a treat it is a way of life for them. I am not saying for one second that the poor should devote all their free time to bettering them selves but when most work less then 40 hours they should have time to spend a few hours a week making food for their children. If they don't think it is a priority to put healthy food into their children's bellies then why should we? Why should the government take more of my hard earned income to better another persons life that has no desire to better it themselves?

Re:really?

[Bodhammer]

"'Smith!' screamed the shrewish voice from the telescreen. '6079 Smith W.! Yes, YOU! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that. You're not trying. Lower, please! THAT'S better, comrade. Now stand at ease, the whole squad, and watch me.'

A sudden hot sweat had broken out all over Winston's body. His face remained completely inscrutable. Never show dismay! Never show resentment! A single flicker of the eyes could give you away. He stood watching while the instructress raised her arms above her head and--one could not say gracefully, but with remarkable neatness and efficiency--bent over and tucked the first joint of her fingers under her toes.

'THERE, comrades! THAT'S how I want to see you doing it. Watch me again. I'm thirty-nine and I've had four children. Now look.' She bent over again. 'You see MY knees aren't bent. You can all do it if you want to,' she added as she straightened herself up. 'Anyone under forty-five is perfectly capable of touching his toes. We don't all have the privilege of fighting in the front line, but at least we can all keep fit. Remember our boys on the Malabar front! And the sailors in the Floating Fortresses! Just think what THEY have to put up with. Now try again. That's better, comrade, that's MUCH better,' she added encouragingly as Winston, with a violent lunge, succeeded in touching his toes with knees unbent, for the first time in several years."



George Orwell, "1984", chapter 3

Entitlement?

[Feyshtey]

So your saying that poor people are fat and/or unhealthy because they get sick of eating inexpensive but boring healthy food? Well that certainly justifies a program that will pay you to eat it.

See, this is the entitlement bullshit that we're fighting. Hate to tell you this, but if it's a choice between my kid eating lentils and oatmeal or not eating, he's going to eat lentils and outmeal and like it. It's not your problem to make sure I have a sparkling variety in my diet. People seem to have no freaking clue what a hardshit actually is anymore, which is to be expected from a society that cant be allowed to play dodgeball because someone might get hit with a ball.

Re:Entitlement?

[biek]

People seem to have no freaking clue what a hardshit actually is anymore

With a poor diet they're bound to have a hardshit sooner or later

Re:No seat belt for you...No insurance for injurie

[sjames]

Well, OK, but you need to be aware of the full consequences. Do you like any sort of physical activity at all? Statistically speaking, 100% of sports injuries are fully preventable by not participating in sports, so I guess we just won't cover any of those any more. No bicycling (you could get hit by a car), no walks (same), most certainly no DIY home repairs (people hurt themselves all the time that way).

No matter who you are and what you do, there is SOMETHING you do frequently that others would like to ban to keep insurance costs down. If it's fair for your ban list to be implemented, it's fair for their ban lists to be implemented. I can just see that nirvana now! Every day on TV in the morning we'll receive our insurance approved activities list for the day. No need to think about it, when the whistle blows, move on to the next officially approved activity. Please be sure to consult an approved manual to make sure you're performing your activities in a fiscally responsible manner.

I remember quite a few pizza parties ...

[porky_pig_jr]

when I was working for IBM/Lotus division.

Now I know why my paycheck wasn't that great.

PPJ.

Screw willing

[rsilvergun]

let's try able. Try 6 12 hour shifts at a dead end restaurant or construction job and see how much cooking you do. Add in screaming kids (because you don't have ready access to healthcare) and season your misery to taste.

Off topic, but seriously, what the hell is with this (uniquely American) thing where we revel in the suffering of people that make poor life decisions while under heavy duress? We give the poor just enough support to live miserable lives and as soon as they start making any head way we pull the rug out from under them. WTF?

Re:Screw willing

[Sentrion]

It's called the welfare trap. Once you fall in you can never climb out. I think it's the inevitable result of our political system. If you're the member of the party that promotes welfare programs you have a built-in incentive to get as many potential voters into that system as possible. Once they are in those voters will rush to the polls to vote for the party that promotes the welfare programs. But the political incentive to help those in the system to get back on their feed is much weaker for the party that promotes the welfare programs.

On the other hand, you have a party that opposes the welfare programs because of the drag those programs have on those who support themselves. So the opposing party, knowing they cannot eliminate the welfare programs, negotiates with the other party to make the programs very difficult to qualify for and to strip down what those programs provide. The party that promotes welfare then hopes that those in the program stay there, creates incentives for those stuck into the system to have as many children as possible, thereby increasing the number of people in the system, and by making them continue to suffer while receiving spartan aid, they gain support from those who feel pity for the people in the system while at the same time gaining support from those living on the edge who hope the system will be available for them if they need it. Those who promote welfare also know that they have to keep costs low enough to prevent higher income taxpayers from being so overburdened that the system collapses onto itself. Both parties also depend on the higher income taxpayers for campaign contributions so there is strong incentive to keep them happy enough to tolerate the welfare programs.

So, clearly, the only piece of the puzzle missing is the program to help those stuck in the system to get back on their feet, but unfortunately financial success and self-righteous arrogance go hand in hand. So the people that should have the higher incentive to educate, heal, and rehabilitate those stuck in the welfare trap instead just have the "get off your ass and get a job" attitude, and then they go off on a tangent about how hard life was when they were growing up, but with hard work, determination, and risk taking, they were able to "make it." But such "make yourself rich" motivation talk sounds as silly as "I won the lottery. You can too." After all, many of our poor do work hard, are very determined, and did take risks. They just lost. It's the other end of the risk equation that nobody wants to talk about.

But heaven forbid someone who is getting food stamps has a color TV, or heaven forbid that a working class guy files for bankruptcy to keep a roof over his head, when, clearly, he should live in his car and work three jobs if that's what it takes to pay off his emergency room bill.

Re:Screw willing

[Feyshtey]

I have done 6 12 hour shifts in dead end jobs, including doing janitorial work and car washes in a body shop during the weekdays, while flipping pizzas and waiting tables in shitty restaurants and bars at night and on weekends. Did it for a decade. It sucked. So I decided I wasnt going to do it anymore. I slept an hour or two less a night to teach myself the basics of a menial trade using books I got for a couple bucks at a used bookstore, and got a slightly better job. Then I worked my ass off, took any training I could find, and listened to anyone that would teach me something and got a better job. And a better one. And a better one. I dont know how many interviews i got rejected in. Seriously it must be in the thousands. But I didnt quit. I'm a business owner now because I would settle for nothing less. That could be gone tomorrow, but I'm not about to slink into a corner and quit. I'd build it up again because I want to raise my son in some degree of comfort I never knew.

No one revels in the shitty situation other people are in, whether they put themselves there or not. But at some point it's up to those people to improve their lives or become complacent with being subsidized. The fact that I never quit trying should not require me to make sure they have braised beef and asparagus barbs in garlic butter instead of lentils and beans.

Re:Screw willing

[Runaway1956]

You've pretty much described the system we have. But, what's that saying? Never attribute to malice, that which can be chalked up to incompetence.

I think - mind you, this is just what I think - that sometime back in the early 1900's, welfare started off with genuine goodwill. At the time, no one realized how many people were living in poverty, so the welfare grew much larger, and much more rapidly than any of the kind hearted souls ever expected. Yeah, there were politics involved, but less so than you seem to describe.

After a few years of welfare programs, some of the political agenda started creeping in, but even then, it was more incompetence than some kind of a plan. Politicians and bean counters started tampering with the qualifications, and of course, they expanded the programs to ensure that no child was left to go hungry.

The one thing they missed, was the eugenics angle. And, that subject has come up often enough, and it's always shot down, explained away, and rejected primarily because the Nazis made such an abortion of it when they were in power.

Eugenics. The government should be saying, "Yeah, we can feed you, and put a roof over your head. But, you must understand, if you're not competent enough to do that for yourself, then we don't want you having more babies to burden us with. Consent to sterilization, then we'll start paying your bills for you."

That generational welfare extended family thing never would have happened, if we could only get hold of that eugenics idea.

Of course, I lay it out rather cut and dried. There needs to be a humanitarian side to that. Anyone can be down on their luck for a few months, or a couple of years. There needs to be a time limit thing in there. Six to twelve months with no obligations about sterilization. You get maybe another year after signing the agreement. If at the end of 2 or 2 1/2 years, you haven't been sterilized, then the welfare ends. If children are involved, the state takes the kids to a foster home, or whatever, where they can be fed.

Someone will snivel that it sounds harsh. Well - life is tough. And, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. The rest are claimed by Darwin and company.