America’s growing obesity “was never considered” up until five years ago, Senytka says. Now it’s “a very real situation.” The problem is finding the space to fit a wider passenger “because there’s so much more going into a vehicle than there was 10 years ago.”
Ill assume by the phrase "theres so much more going into a vehicle", that she means personel rather than options.
The automotive industry isn’t the only business feeling America’s weight problem. Companies of all kinds are adjusting their designs, measurements, marketing, menus and training in an effort to find ways to prevent, accommodate - even profit from - growing waistlines.
Sad.
But obesity hasn’t been easy for many businesses to deal with. Some embrace it, others are scared of it, and some just won’t talk about it. That’s the typical reaction of American business to any “momentous sea change in the public,” said Bobby Calder, a marketing professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
When it comes to obesity, which has skyrocketed in the past 20 years, American business is in the midst of that transition.
It`s that bad, huh?
*The impact of weight gain is being felt in the medical field more than perhaps anywhere else. Obesity is closely associated with increases in heart disease, diabetes, cancer and even depression - all expensive conditions to treat.
For years, medical insurers and major employers have treated these problems only once they appeared, while making dire predictions about the future of health care.
Now the medical field is focusing on prevention, since treating obesity itself clearly isn’t working. Increasingly, medical providers are stepping out of the doctor’s office and into partnerships with community organizations, schools and employers, with the goal of educating people about weight loss, nutrition and behavior modification.
“We’re trying to . . . address this from a public health perspective, because we’re not going to solve this clinically,” said William Caplan, director of clinical development at Kaiser Permanente’s Care Management Institute.*
It`s a social problem now, which means that we all end up paying for it.
*The apparel business has been scared of fat people for years. Department stores treated plus-size customers with near disdain, putting clothing for larger women on the third floor in the back by the restrooms.
Then regular retail sales softened, and when executives went looking for the reason, they found all those fat people. Plus sizes for men and women now represent 23% of all the retail dollars spent on apparel, according to NPD Fashionworld, a market research firm.*
Nearly a quarter of all sales?
“People’s fannies are wider than that,” said Frank Sumner, president of the company. “We sell a few 19-inch seats, but we think for a while it’s going to be 20’s, 21’s and 22’s,” he said.
Those seats were just too small anyway.
But the airline industry is pretty much stuck with 17- and 18-inch coach seats because of the fixed width of a plane’s fuselage, and that has made comfort increasingly elusive for all sizes of passengers. Last year, Southwest Airlines announced that especially large customers would be asked to buy a second seat. Though the ticket would be refunded afterward unless the flight was completely sold out, Southwest was publicly vilified, and many larger travelers were offended.
Stupid insensitive airlines!
Superimposed on all these corporate developments is that obesity has also become a huge workplace issue. Even as companies try to figure out how to market to larger consumers, they are seeking ways to keep their own employees from getting so fat it makes them sick.
Too fat to work…
*Bariatric scales that can weigh someone over 300 pounds also are a growth business, along with other kinds of medical equipment. Last year, stretcher manufacturers Ferno-Washington Inc. and Stryker Corp. both added new models with maximum weights of 650 pounds to their product lines.
And there is Goliath Casket, which makes only oversize caskets and is adding ever-larger models.*
Snicker, oops, I mean snort.
The Washington Business Group on Health, a non-profit organization that focuses on helping corporations deal with health care issues, wants to help companies be more assertive on the issue. Last summer it started an advocacy group dedicated to obesity, called the Institute on the Costs and Health Effects of Obesity. The organization was flooded with requests from companies that wanted to be on the founding board, said Helen Darling, president of WBGH.
Come on people, let`s get our shit together. Eat. Less. Food. Damnit!
What do you want? obesity is arguably the most severe chronic condition facing the developed world and a predisposing factor for about 20 major physical & psychological illnesses. As the 3rd world develops obesity will become common there too. And so far the old addage of ‘eat less, exercise more’ doesn’t really work for long term weightloss for most people.
Whuckfistle, have you ever had a weight problem? I have, ever since I was a kid. I eat less than most people I know, not purposely, but because my appetite just isn’t that large. Still, up until three weeks ago, I was about 50 pounds overweight. I started a regimen that eliminated all flour, all sugar, and most starches, which incidentally make up the bulk of the bottom of the food pyramid. You know, the grains—where we’re supposed to get most of our calories. Now I’m 35 pounds overweight, and I feel better than I have in a while.
For some people, it’s not as simple as just eating less, so maybe this isn’t just a willpower problem. Maybe a lot of us aren’t eating the right kinds of food. The consumption of carbohydrates, especially refined carbohydrates, has gone up just as our waistlines have. Why? Partially because they’re less expensive to produce—and thus more profitable—than the alternative. But many studies show that they contribute to weight gain and other health problems, such as diabetes.
Of course some overweight people just plain eat too much. For most of us, though, it’s more complicated than that.
When I graduated from high school, I was a very healthy size 14. Nothing to be ashamed about–I was physically active, played water polo in high school, looked great, and felt great. Then I tried to join the Air Force. I was 8 pounds over the maximum allowable weight for my height, according to their weight charts.
I went on the Atkins diet (wasn’t popular then, but my mother convinced me to try it) and did not cheat ONCE for two weeks. I gained two pounds.
I said screw the Air Force, but in trying to get off the two additional pounds, I gained more.
Dieting sucks. It just flat does not work for me or for most people I know. Every time I have dieted religiously and lost weight, I’ve ended up gaining more than I lost. And it’s not just due to my being a pig; my husband eats far more than I do and he’s as slim as can be.
I’m also sick to death of having perfect strangers feel free to come up to me and comment on my size. I’m frustrated with the limited amount of decent clothes at a reasonable price.
So dieting sucks, being fat sucks, and my insurance won’t cover any medical assistance for me. What now?
And so far the old addage of ‘eat less, exercise more’ doesn’t really work for long term weightloss for most people.
Gee, I dunno. Seems to have worked for me. Changed the way I ate in October of last year and started working out regularly in April. I’ve lost 60 pounds so far.
If you do not give up, yes, eating less and exercising more WILL take off the weight. This is not rocket science! The problem is people don’t want to invest the time and energy to do it and they want 100 pounds gone in a month, and if they don’t get it, they quit.
Once again, somebody misses the difference between an obese person (an individual problem) and several million obese people (a societal problem). How surprising.
I feel for you, N. Sane. Atkins is working quite well for me. (Except for last week, when I drank only diet pop, not water. Apparently water is required for weight loss. Has to do with kidney/liver function. Live and learn, I guess.)
As I (sort of) mentioned in my first post, Beelzebubba, after reading Dr. Atkins’s books and reviewing some of the research data he used, I agree with him that excessive carbohydrates and super-sized portions are largely to blame for today’s obesity epidemic. Page 12 of the first PowerPoint presentation on this page (it’s the blue one) is a graph that shows that while fat consumption has gone down in the last several decades, carb consumption has gone up, and so have our waistlines.
Most? I doubt most. I’m sure there’s a small percentage that have some sort of condition that causes them to gain weight and makes it impossible to get off, but look at the proportions of fat Americans compared to fat Europeans, or fat Asians (developed parts of Asia, like Japan). Unless you’re suggesting Americans have some sort of genetic defeciency that isn’t manifest (or at least appears less often) in Europeans or Asians or even Canadians.
Nobody can argue that weightloss is hard, but the problem is that Americans are getting fat in the first place. Thin people or people at least within their height/weight ratio aren’t all former fatties that have lost the weight. Most of them just don’t put it on. Eating right and exercising is more effective if you do it before your 50 000th meal at McDonalds and realizing you can’t even fit in a chair to eat it.
I think that’s the biggest problem, and maybe the biggest difference between the US and the rest of the world. In the US, it seems eating right and exercising is accepted as something you only do after getting fat, while in other countries, people are a lot more proactive at making sure they don’t get fat to begin with.
I should also add that in other countries, there are less “temptations”. Fast food is less prolific and usually healthier outside the of the US, and the portions are more reasonable. A person that eats X many fast food meals in the US is going to balloon up a lot faster than someone eating the same number of meals in the UK or Germany or wherever.
That’s very true, ultrafilter. What works for one person (cutting back and exercising more) may not work so well for another person. (For the record, exercise is a necessity, no matter what.)
Also, there’s the matter of recidivism to consider. Many people can lose weight on a low-fat diet, but keeping it off is the big challenge.
Just out of curiosity, SnoopyFan, how did you change your diet?
You missed my point. We live in a society that values behaviors that lead to obesity. If we’re going to combat the problem, we have to change that, not just the habits of individuals.
No, ProjectOmega, that’s not what I meant at all. What I meant was that we Americans have open access to tons of food that is just bad for us. The food we eat is often full of sugar, refined flour, and trans fatty acids, all of which any doctor will tell you is bad for you. Just as you said, people in countries without as much access to that stuff don’t even have to think about losing weight because the problem never even comes up.
And yes, after eating that stuff for so many years, you can develop problems such as insulin resistance that make losing weight difficult.
When I started my post, I intended to say that I think there are a couple of reasons why the obesity problem has skyrocketed in the U.S., but obviously never got there.
I think that the unrealistic perceptions that are fed to us by magazines, movies, television, etc., have a lot to do with it. When you become convinced that the way to be beautiful is to be virtually anorexic, it can easily lead to eating disorders, whether it be anorexia, bulemia, or obesity.
I also think that the “low fat” push over the last couple of decades has contributed. Too many people have fallen for the “if it’s reduced fat, it must be good for you.” In my own experience, I’ve found that it’s better and easier to eat small quantities of the real thing than larger amounts of the artificially altered foods.
Going on diet after diet can get someone so metabolically out of whack that it can be virtually impossible to sustain a weight loss.
There are also a lot of other factors that play into the equation. For instance, I lost 70 pounds between August of 2000 and June of 2001. After that, it stabilized, which was still okay, even though I’d have liked to lose more weight. But I had surgery in October of 2001, and then was on drug therapy that caused a weight gain. Then when I went off the medication, the condition for which I had surgery and the medication became unbearably painful and I continued to gain weight. In December of 2002 I had major surgery, and have continued to gain weight since that time. I’ve now gained back 60 of the 70 pounds I lost. I work full-time, attend college full-time, write when I get the time, and still have a home and family to care for. I know I’m not the only person in this situation!
No, N. Sane, you’re not. My husband also is taking medications that make it very difficult for him to lose weight. (And in fact he only gained the weight after starting the medications.)
Good point, ultrafilter. Even though I missed it the first time. But not all nutritionists/doctors agree on the best solution. That makes implementing a nationwide program kind of hard.
I’m sure Coldfire will be along shortly to move this to The Pit. There it will be added to all the other “Lose some weight, fattie!” threads that have come and gone over the years.
You think so? I didn’t think this had degenerated into a Pitfest, so far, anyway. Even though this is an emotionally weighted issue for a lot of people, I think it is possible to consider the facts objectively without slamming anyone.
'Course I guess Coldfire will be the judge of whether that’s what we’re doing here or not.
Just out of curiosity, SnoopyFan, how did you change your diet?
All I did was quit eating when I’m not physically hungry. Sounds simple but when you’ve been overweight all your life it is REALLY hard to learn the difference between hunger and boredom. I’m still learning.
I eat whatever I want, though now when I start eating only when my stomach is growling, and I stop when I’m full. I have fast food quite often, actually, because I hate to cook, I probably hit the drive-thru 3 times a week on average.
One way to solve it would be to ask, “What’s changed in the past X years, that’s caused Americans to expand en masse?”, and then undo those changes where possible, and figure out how to counteract them elsewhere.
We don’t want to go back to the days when a woman’s place was in the kitchen, but we could apply time-and-a-half after 40 hours to the vast majority of workers. That would give a lot of people more time to do other things besides work, including cook more and exercise more.
We could require restaurants to have as many diet soda choices as non-diet soda choices.
We could rearrange our agricultural subsidies so that fruits and veggies were subsidized, rather than wheat and cotton.
We might even find a way to subsidize groceries that make more shelf/freezer space available for prepackaged meals that are healthy, inexpensive, and quick and easy to prepare. (Call it the Trader Joe’s subsidy. :))
We could offer tax breaks on household returns for gym memberships and purchases of exercise equipment.
We could ban fat-food restaurants from advertising on the public airwaves.
And that’s just a start. In short, there are lots of ways to attack the problem of obesity if we decide to treat it as a societal problem, rather than as an individual problem repeated 100,000,000 times.
But not all nutritionists/doctors agree on the best solution. That makes implementing a nationwide program kind of hard.