It's interesting that they are fining the *companies*, not the employees. Japan has this
sort of "group ethic" we don't have here. And employee that gets fat will shame the
entire company (and cost them money). So the company will server Japanese food
in the cafeteria, and encourage the employees not to eat at McDonald's. And do exercise
breaks during work hours, and encourage use of the stairs.
Although people here would have a fit if the government did this, the insurance
companies already do charge more for insurance in companies where the employees
are less healthy, although there the reasons are often just that the employees are older
(so companies would rather hire younger people). But companies DO contribute
to *bad* health, by having practices that encourage:
- Too many work hours
- Working through lunches
- Serving bad food in cafeterias
- Loads of snack machines featuring pop and crackers
When I was staying for a week in a hospital, to help care for a patient, I was amazed at
how hard it was to get decent healthy food *in a hospital*. Forget about the average
corporate cafeteria. In America we tend to blame or praise the individual, but for the
people working in that hospital, for instance, it would be quite difficult to eat well.
There is a lot of social pressure in the workplace. One doc I see for my kid, regularly
has pizza or donuts there for his staff, which he buys himself to help reward the staff.
I truly appreciate the motivation there, but pizza and donuts aren't going to help keep
the staff healthy.
But it's interesting that there is a tacit understanding that "Japanese food makes for
skinny people, American food makes for fat people". I don't think it's as easy as
the calorie count: if you eat Japanese food, you get full faster no matter how much
is served, and it's difficult to overeat it. Kind of like, it's difficult to overeat apples, even
when a whole bushel is sitting there to eat. Maybe some foods are just naturally
better at regulating the appestat.
BTW, at one company I helped run, we did serve lunch for employees. Mainly to
keep people from skipping lunch, since programmers are notorious for living off Twinkies
and soda pop. We had some discussion about what menu really should be used,
and that was difficult, since lunch turned out to be the "big meal" for most of us
(why bother cooking at home when you have a great lunch?). It did make me think
a lot about nutrition issues, because it occurred to me that we were now responsible
for other people's health. We ended up using a "body builder" type menu (employee
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