Leo Chiang DOT COM

Seeing as how I’m focusing on fitness with my Crossfit regimen, I thought I’d do a regular Friday Health Check post for everyone. Little tips and info at the end of a hard work week to keep everyone on their toes for the weekend.

Fat Makes You Poor

Fat guys get fewer chicks and die prematurely from heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Most people want lean and fit mates and shun the out-o-shape roly-poly. Consequently, obese people have a much harder time getting married. Abdominal fat leads to a host of other health problems, such as high blood pressure, abnormal blood fats, blood vessel inflammation, erectile dysfunction, low testosterone, blood clotting problems and back pain. Fat can also put a serious dent in your pocketbook. Researchers from the Ohio State University found that obese people earned less than half of what normal-weight men earned. Income dropped substantially for every one-point increase in body mass index (BMI, a height-weight index). The salary difference has increased every year since 1990. Obese people pay more for life insurance, have a harder time getting into top colleges and have less prestigious jobs.

Employers don’t want to pay higher insurance rates for obese employees and often think they’re lazy, undisciplined and interact poorly with the public. Weight discrimination was more pronounced against women than men. Most employers showed no political correctness when expressing bias against the overweight. Only one state has a law prohibiting discrimination against fat people. The best news from the study was that people who lost large amounts of weight experienced dramatic improvements in their financial position. Small weight losses created little change in net worth. (The New York Times, Dec. 19, 2006, Economics Human Biology, 3: 296-313, 2005)

Posted on April 20th, 2007 by Leo
Filed under: Friday Health Check