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Is Your Workplace the Cause of Obesity?

10 Replies

One of our favorite food bloggers, Professor Marion Nestle of NYU, has taken issue with the editors at the New York Times.

An article by health writer Tara Parker-Pope cites the sedentary workplace as the potential cause for obesity’s meteoric rise in the past few decades.

According to a study led by researchers from Louisiana State University:

Over the last 50 years in the U.S. we estimate that daily occupation-related energy expenditure has decreased by more than 100 calories, and this reduction in energy expenditure accounts for a significant portion of the increase in mean U.S. body weights for women and men. read more…

The report shows that in 1960, one out of two Americans had a job that was physically active. Now it is estimated that only one in five Americans achieves a relatively high level of physical activity at work.

“If we’re going to try to get to the root of what’s causing the obesity epidemic, work-related physical activity needs to be in the discussion,” said Dr. Timothy S. Church, a noted exercise researcher at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La., and the study’s lead author. “There are a lot of people who say it’s all about food. But the work environment has changed so much we have to rethink how we’re going to attack this problem.” read more…

Here’s what Nestle, alongside with Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser had to say:

To the editor:

It makes sense that sedentary work is a factor in the current obesity epidemic (May 26). But it cannot be an important cause. The changing American workplace cannot explain why the obesity rate among the nation’s preschoolers has doubled in recent years and that among elementary schoolchildren has tripled.

The rise in obesity worldwide is linked to the embrace of the American diet, not to a decline in manufacturing.

In China, childhood obesity has increased at least five-fold since 1985.

Simplest explanations are usually best. Reversing obesity means eating less and making healthier food choices.

It also means making it easier to do that by setting policies that promote smaller portions, lower prices on fruits and vegetables, restrictions on marketing food to children, and healthier school meals.

Of course, an increase in well-paid manufacturing jobs would help too.

—Marion Nestle and Eric Schlosser

Our take: The junk food and fast food industry will have a field day with this report. It vindicates them. The fact that American kids are consuming 100′s more empty calories today than they did in the 1960′s is not important. It’s the fact that their moms are now working a desk job instead of in a factory that’s making them balloon.

What do you think?

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  • http://www.facebook.com/kenleebow Ken Leebow

    The simple answer to this complex problem … there isn’t just one cause for obesity.

    Ken Leebow
    http://www.LifeWithoutLipitor.com

  • Dave

    I am not sure how the simple statement “work-related physical activity needs to be in the discussion” could actually start an argument. I can tell you that a chef working in a hot sweaty kitchen  will burn more calories than someone sitting at a desk.

  • Mr. Bill

    Nestle and Schlosser are off base. There is nothing wrong with including physically activity into the discussion. Also, they counter with several statistics regarding obesity rates in children. However, even a brief two minute reading of the paper shows that they only looked at adults.

  • Daria

    I don’t think modern workplaces help us in this regard.  For example, there is almost always a vending machine in the office that contains nothing but junky processed foods.  In my office, they bring food in almost everyday for breakfast or lunch meetings and leave the leftovers in the breakroom for everyone else to finish off.  It is always unhealthy – bagels, pastries, pizza, pastas, etc and always high carb.  Combine people eating that high carb load and then going back to their desks to sit down for the rest of the day and it is not difficult to discern why we are gaining fat.
    Diet and lifestyle.
    Any time there is free food people want to take it. At the end of the day it is the individuals choice, so while I feel our company could do more to provide healthy food for us, we don’t have to eat it.

  • http://twitter.com/wellnessforalln Janice M. Epstein

    nestle and schlosser start by acknowledging that “sedentary work is a factor in the obesity epidemic.”  what they are arguing is that it is not “the root” of the problem. the issues of obesity and quality food are full of derailing discussions and even obfuscations.  they are simply keeping us focused and maybe even reminding media about their responsibilities to the public in this regard.

  • Ralf Voellmer

    Decline in workplace activity means decline in manufacturing jobs. Let’s be real – office jobs never had much physical activity to begin with.

    The decline in manufacturing jobs has been taking on momentum since the 1980′s. Just take a look at this animated graph.

    http://bit.ly/kMYYpy

    It doesn’t start until 1995, but it points to something dramatic: a link between the loss of manufacturing jobs and obesity.

  • Gerome

    Wow. What’s wrong with this story? Plenty. First, TTP does not call the sedentary lifestyle at work “THE potential cause” of obesity. She’s a smart lady who knows that there are multiple factors. And I don’t see at all where the food industry is getting a pass here. Not by her article, or Church’s research.

    Second, Mr. Bill — Marion Nestle is not off base, and she did not suggest that physical activity should not be in the discussion. She points out that children, who presumably are not working in sedentary jobs are obese, proving that the problem’s causes cannot be explained by adult office worker behavior.

    The study showed that the difference in calories burned between the old and current work environment is about 120-150 calories/day for a portion of the adult population who went from active to passive jobs. And here’s where lots of people run off the rails — they do the math — and conclude that at 150 extra calories per day, you’d add a pound every 24 days (3600/150). So, that works out to about 15 pounds in a year. Here comes the error — and that in 5 years at that pace, you’re up 75 pounds! YIKES!!! (And false.) When you add weight, you need more calories to maintain whatever your new weight is. It takes about 10-15 calories to support a pound of weight/day. So, if you overate/underexercised by 150 calories per day, you would be able to support about 10 to 15 pounds of extra weight. And then you plateau. This means that the chance in office habits can account for a total gain of about 12 pounds.

    The point that Nestle makes? That we’re eating a whole hell of a lot more calories per day that can be accounted for by being less active. People are eating 3000-3500 calories per day. And, that’s enough to add and maintain an extra 100 pounds. Exercise is a really important part of the mix, but portion control trumps it when we consider the enormity of the problem that obese people are facing.
     

  • Mike

    To give any weight (pun intended) to this story is a waste of both your time and intellectual effort. It’s true, my job now is a lot less demanding then my jobs in the 90′s, but my diet is better, I don’t smoke any more, I eat better food and I sleep better. This story is at best misleading and at worst, another attempt HFCS apologist…

  • Karyn

    While it’s obviously not the whole story regarding obesity, sedentary office environments certainly can be a factor.  As Daria pointed out below, offices almost always have a lot of food on hand for snacking and grazing:  not only the pizza lunches and the meeting donuts-bagels-and-juices, but also the ubiquitous candy jars at nearly every desk.  Then, too, sometimes the sheer boredom of working in some offices can make it easy to give in to constant nibbling of one’s own stash. ;-)

    I also remember, when I worked in an office, getting occasional complaints if I actually got up to walk around a bit now and then instead of sitting in my cubical all day.  I’m talking a two-minute leg stretch, not a half-hour meander around the building.

    When I went from office work to retail, I lost forty pounds within the first year. :-D  Working on my feet definitely made a difference, as did working in a busy environment that discouraged nonstop noshing.  Now that I work as a front-end manager, I am constantly in motion, walking back and forth at a brisk pace.  As long as I watch my diet, it can only be helpful!

    • Karyn

      ETA: “Cubical” should be “cubicle.”  LOL.