Day 41 – Smaller Belly, Bigger Paycheque

“There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less.”

~ Bertrand Russell

209.1 lbs

No, I’m not saying I make money from this blog. But a lot of my readers write in saying “that’s all well and good, but buying good food is expensive so we end up getting what we can afford.”

Know what would be great? If someone did a study seeing if there was a link between the size of your paycheque and the size of your waistline.

Here to tell us about his study seeing if there was a link between the size of your paycheque and the size of your waistline is Paul Leigh, a professor at the University of California, Davis. Leigh was senior author on a study that looked into whether minimum wage earners had a stronger gravitational pull than people higher up the socioeconomic ladder.

“Our study clarifies a link that has been assumed but difficult to prove,” he says. “The correlation between obesity and poverty-level wages was very strong.”

There are a couple of guesses as to why this is: poorer people tend to live in neighbourhoods with fewer safe parks to hang out in (think of those Shiny Happy People jogging through riverbank or sea wall parks) therefore cutting down on their physical activity – but I think that’s reaching. After all, minimum wage earners like some waitresses, janitors, construction workers, etc.don’t exactly sit on their butts in cubicles all day.

I think it’s because crap food full if high sodium and high fructose corn syrup tends to be cheaper than many of the healthy alternatives.

“The outcome [of the study] leads us to believe that raising minimum wages could be part of the solution to the obesity epidemic,” says Leigh, proving me right. “Doing so could increase purchasing power enough to expand access to healthier lifestyle choices.” Of course, he was published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine,which is shared by a bunch of other authors whereas I have my own blog.

“Instrumental variables gave us the chance to evaluate an independent factor that is definitely not caused by obesity—minimum wages. After adjusting for inflation, minimum wages have been stagnant or falling over the past three decades, placing most full-time workers near the poverty line. It is also during those same three decades that we have seen the prevalence of obesity soar.”

In the results of Leigh’s study, poor people were more likely to have weights in the obese range, or BMIs of 30 or greater. People in the southern United States (where minimum-wage levels, set by the state, are among the lowest) were even more likely to be obese.

This is kind of ironic because while minimum wage paycheques cost less to the employers, , according to a completely separate study fat workers end up costing companies more in injury claims. The heaviest employees had twice the rate of workers’ compensation claims as their fit co-workers.

Maybe if more companies paid their workers more than minimum wage and/or provided incentives for being fit (company gym memberships, fitness bonuses, or whatever) they’d save the costs of those programs and more in reduced claims payouts, and have workers on the job more often instead of at home recuperating from injuries.