Japanese firms face penalties for overweight staff (2008) | Hacker News Reader

Japanese firms face penalties for overweight staff (2008)

theguardian.com

20 pointssourpuss12 comments

> According to reports, firms will be required to cut the number of overweight workers and their dependants by 10% by 2012. Those that fail to reach the targets face surcharges of up to 10% on contributions to a welfare fund for the elderly.

Has this since resulted in a large number of overweight people being fired and unemployable? I'm not sure that'd be an ideal situation either. Putting this on employers seems somewhat arbitrary and unfair, although I suppose companies could be doing more to encourage activity instead of chaining people to a desk for 8-10 hours every day.

This is great. I wish USA Swimming would require all coaches and officials to pass an annual Fatty Liver Index test in order to be certified. Watching the live stream of their national-level meets the pool deck is filled with unhealthy overweight adults. Sad downer to look at. Reminder of my recent sinking health, which I'm making progress with.

https://www.mdapp.co/fatty-liver-index-fli-calculator-356/

https://www.dovepress.com/the-fatty-liver-index-a-simple-and...

My genetic report tells me I store fat primarily on my waistline. Thus, while my current BMI is 22 and normal, I've got a 37 inch waistline and handfuls of flab. When I watch The Leopard and see Burt Lancaster, at age 50, standing out of the tub waiting for the priest to hand him a bath towel, I get a good idea of what a healthy waist looks like for an older man.

When I began getting my health back, using bodyweight as my metric, I was unclear what my target would be. I could remember my weight at age 17 when I was lean. A secondary metric was waist circumference, as I knew visceral fat wasn't healthy, but more so I like the feeling of my pants being a little loose, especially when they are a smaller size.

Finding the FLI and calculator this month, along with blood test numbers, now gives me a meaningful number. It confirms Fatty Liver Disease four months ago, and is currently either confirming no FLD by American model or getting close by Korean model.

The Korean article linked uses the phrase intensive lifestyle modification in their conclusion. That was required for me.

They use bmi so all sorts of outlier body types get punished for no reason.

Everytime BMI is mentioned, half the internet are convinced they're comparable to olympic level weight lifters, and not just overweight.

> It found that 47 percent of people classified as overweight by BMI and 29 percent of those who qualified as obese were healthy as measured by at least five of those other metrics. Meanwhile, 31 percent of normal-weight people were unhealthy by two or more of the same measures.2 Using BMI alone as a measure of health would misclassify almost 75 million adults in the U.S., the authors concluded.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bmi-is-a-terrible-measu...

This is a strawman argument, everyone is aware you can be a normal weight yet in poor health for a number of other reasons. I'm not sure anyone is claiming BMI is the single measure of health, it's just a very easy one to measure that correlates well over a large population.

It work fine unless you are the 20% outlier and your company punishes you for it, which is what happens in japan

I'm curious what your source is on "they use bmi."

The word BMI appears nowhere in the linked article.

A cursery internet search indicates they use waist measurements.

BMI is a height to weight ratio. It is not a measurement of waists.

The only real valid measurement is body fat percentage. Everything else (waist bmi etc) is a secondary measurement with different levels of correlation. If you don’t measure the one thing that matters you end up screwing over anyone who falls outside of the expected correlation. As a general policy making tool it’s ok but if every individual is made to conform the lives of the outlier are unfairly impacted. Of course it’s Japan and they don’t care about outliers but still sucks

BMI is terrible because it doesn’t take enough parameters into account. When I was doing even a bit of lifting 2-3 times a week I was pushing into the overweight category. If you standardize bmi to Japanese people most Americans would be overweight because they are just generally wider built.

BMI is not a standard classification scheme either. It is much more punishing than western standards in japan

The article doesn't mention BMI at all? It just says "Men with girths of more than 85cm (33.5in) will be given exercise and diet plans and, in urgent cases, told to see a doctor."

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