Overweight- should I be paid to lose weight?
By: serenebeauty (15 April 2009)
I was reading an article just a few moments ago, while on a break from work and the article was from the BMJ (some medical journal) debating whether overweight people should be paid to lose weight as an incentive. This would be on the same basis that one South Eastern UK County (Essex) offered pregnant smokers to give up. I personally think that instead of paying the person to lose weight, they should make healthier food cheaper, allow free swimming/exercise classes and tax, I did say tax (it is April -Mr Darling consider that instead of taxing drivers fuel taxes), the Skinny (I mean skeletal, no bust and apparently no brains) tv and film stars.
I know that I'm moaning but I want to lose weight and exercise more but everything is too expensive and it is no wonder why those who are depicted as being obese usually have a poorer background don't have access to a personal trainer, chef, stylist, a career that pays them millions, are the way that they are. I am a voluptuous woman and have assets (they keep me afloat, therefore an asset- no money was spent, God-Given) that the skinnies get implants that don't suit them, a certain Ms Price (I do adore her business acumen) looks plastic.
Here's the article that made me think, it's from Richard Ingham's AFP blog:
"Should people be rewarded for doing things that make them healthier? That's the intriguing question raised in a paper published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ).
It shines light on a trend by health authorities and large corporations to dangle money or vouchers to people who quit smoking, lose weight, practise safe sex or take vital medications.
The idea is to provide a carrot for a healthier lifestyle. And when someone becomes healthier, that also has indirect rewards for the community as a whole, in terms of better work productivity and lower medical costs.
At first sight, some of these incentives seem astonishing. Pregnant women in the county of Essex were offered food vouchers worth 20 pounds if they stopped smoking for a week; 40 pounds if they kept off cigarettes for four weeks, and another 40 pounds after a year.
In Varallo, Italy, authorities offered the equivalent of 67 dollars to overweight residents if they achieved a target weight, rising to 268 dollars if they sustained the goal for five months and 670 dollars for 12 months.
In Tanzania, men and women aged 15-30 were offered the equivalent of 45 dollars if they regularly tested negative for a sexually-transmitted disease. In East London, psychotic patients were offered between five and 15 pounds for getting an injection of antipsychotic drugs.
Should doctors be getting involved in this kind of scheme? After all, every mother-to-be knows -- or should know -- that smoking in pregnancy is terribly damaging to her baby. Giving up cigarettes should be a matter of conscience and maternal responsibility, shouldn't it? And paying people to lose weight -- isn't that rewarding gluttony, and taking the nanny state into the zone of the absurd?
The focus of the BMJ paper was on whether these incentives actually work, and if the published evidence is a guide. Its answer is a qualified 'No'.
The investigators found no evidence to prove that a typical smoking-cessation or weight-loss bonus was more effective than classic methods when monitored over six months or a year. But, put enough money on the table, and there was a better chance of success, they found. A large (unnamed) organisation did well by offering employees up to 750 dollars if they quit smoking for a year, and some weight-loss incentives were quite effective if the sum being offered was more than 1.2 percent of the individual's income.
Does everyone have a price for giving up guilty pleasures? If so, what's yours?"
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Comments on this post:
"Thanks for this, very interesting indeed. Don't get me started on pregnant women smoking - mother nature is a bitch afterall why should some health obsessed women struggle to get pregnant, and others who have no business whatsoever being mothers, drop them out every other second e.g. Kerry Katono or whatever her name is?! Shoot me but any woman who smokes whilst pregnant should be spanked - as long as they don't enjoy spanking"
tmhogirl (15 April 2009)
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"Kerry Katono or whatever her name is! Classic one TMHOgirl. I think the health consequences and expenses of obesity and smoking related ailments are insignificant compared with what people are paid to address these problems. If anything helps, and the local authority think the expenses are justifiable, then why not. If someone wants to pay me to attempt to turn my 4 pack into 6 pack, my address is ....."
andys (15 April 2009)
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