While fitness isn’t included in the university’s required resume-building senior seminar classes, it might be best for graduates to educate themselves in current and continuing realities in the workplace.
In the age of booming healthcare costs, overweight or obese Americans (two-thirds of the population) become a financial loss to companies: risks of arthritis, heart disease, strokes and diabetes create a significant bottom-line cost.
Dealing with obesity (or choosing not to) is a new fiber for employers and employees, totally undeveloped and unsure of itself, but it is a topic that needs attention. Employers’ hesitation to hire those who are overweight or obese is becoming more prevalent than ever before.
Currently, there’s no federal law that protects workers from obesity-related workplace discrimination.
Michigan is the only state with a ban against discrimination against the overweight and obese in hiring practices. Six American cities outside of Michigan have similar laws.
The method by which some employers are distinguishing which applicants are overweight or obese needs to be evaluated.
Victoria Hospital in Texas bans job applications from those who are “too overweight.” Applicants must have a body mass index less than 35 to be considered for a position.
Hospitals around the country don’t seem to realize that the BMI proxy was devised between 1830 and 1850, and it doesn’t measure the percentage of body fat. The equation simply defines the individual’s mass divided by the square of his or her height. It was appropriate for population studies in the 1800s, but not for individual diagnosis (due to its simplicity).
A BMI of less than 35 sounds practical enough: for those 5-feet-5-inches, a BMI of 35 equals 210 lbs. It sounds right, but it certainly doesn’t look right.
Kate Harding, feminist blogger and defender of those in “the fat-o-sphere” produced a collection of photos to illustrate the numbers. On Flickr, her “BMI Illustration Categories” shows photos of women of all different shapes, heights and builds. Captions beneath the photos state their weight and BMI number.
The women considered “obese” is sometimes astonishing. Most of the women look somewhat overweight, but it’s clear basing the distinction on staunch numbers is absurd. Even Adolphe Quetelet, the polymath who developed the BMI proxy, would shake his head. This equation was never intended to measure an individual. It’s too simple.
Notice that there’s no rule at Victoria Hospital for those who are underweight? What about other conditions with equally severe health risks?
This disconnected way of viewing an applicant finds its way in other assumptions of weight problems in America.
Confusing messages about eating healthy don’t compromise with most Americans, who work a lot and need a convenient way to eat healthy.
“While we’re told it’s as easy to head on down to the farmer’s market, it’s only open five hours a week. In contrast, the closest supermarket is open 121 hour a week,” writes Jessica Kinee of University of California Berkeley, in a report about the future of food services.
(Eat vegetables! The vegetables you’re eating are genetically modified! Eat organic vegetables! Those organic vegetables you’re eating aren’t local!)
Surprisingly enough, poor Americans don’t make up the majority of obese adults. Studies show that middle income citizens are the most overweight of all Americans. Forty-one percent of obese adults make at least $35,000 a year.
America is getting fatter, and we’re on course to increase even more so in the next 20 years.
Yale University’s center for Food Policy and Obesity found that discrimination against the obese is more prevalent than biases based on ethnicity, sexual orientation and physical disabilities.
These issues need to be discussed and re-evaluated. If two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese, the effect of these actions (or lack thereof) is far-reaching.
