By NATARIO McKENZIE
Tribune Business Reporter
nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net
NINETY per cent of the Bahamian workforce is either overweight or obese according to a study by a local fitness and consulting firm, its principal telling Tribune Business that the lack of a corporate wellness and fitness culture was significantly lowering workplace productivity and ultimately impacting businesses’ bottom line.
Ethan Quant, founder of Elite Fitness, a leading wellness and fitness firm in The Bahamas, noted that many businesses were suffering from lower workplace productivity and the financial burden of rising employee health care premiums because of employee health issues, primarily brought on by obesity. Mr Quant said that while many businesses view employee health and wellness as an added expense it should be seen as an investment.
“We did a study and found that 90 per cent of the Bahamian workforce is either overweight or obese,” Mr Quant said. That’s a serious cause for concern. The workplace is reflective of the wider population. Many companies invest in equipment, technology and paying for employees to go to school but won’t cover gym membership. We need to start the conversation for develop a corporate wellness culture in The Bahamas.”
He added: “We have found that health care costs have been rising because of the level of obesity in The Bahamas. When you have higher risk employees, your health care premiums are higher, your rate of employee sick days and absenteeism is higher and this all contributes to a lower rate of productivity.”
Using the Body Mass Index (BMI), a measure of body fat based on an individual’s weight in relation to their height, Elite Fitness conducted a research study where 100 men and women aged between 18 and 60 were randomly selected and their BMIs tested. “The findings of the study conducted, though not surprising, was quite disturbing, as it revealed that 90 per cent of the Bahamian workforce is overweight or obese,” thestudy found. “This number is split evenly with 45 per cent being overweight, meaning they have a BMI of 25-29.9, and 45 per cent being obese, meaning that they have a BMI of 30 or greater. The average person in the study had a BMI of 30.79. This means that the average Bahamian employee suffers from obesity.”
Of the study participants 42 per cent were men and 52 per cent were women.
The research study went on to reveal that seven per cent of the men were healthy with a BMI of 18.5-24.9; 45 per cent of the men were overweight with a BMI of 25-29.9; 48 per cent of the men were obese with a BMI of 30 and over; 12 per cent of the women were healthy with a BMI of 18.5; 45 per cent were overweight with a BMI of 25- 29.9 and 43 per cent were obese with a BMI of 30 and over.
Mr Quant explained that this corporate health and wellness push has been inspired by his own weight loss journey. “I was 306 pounds, I lost 110 pounds and transformed not just my body but my life. Your body is a reflection of your lifestyle. Most of us spend a third or more of our day at work. The work place heavily influences the lifestyle that we live but we don’t have a corporate wellness culture here. We don’t have an organisation based corporate wellness programme initiated by many companies here that can run year round.
“Over the last eight months we have been developing a suite of corporate wellness products that is affordable for companies, sort of like an intro or starter course to get employees educated first of all. We do for the most part as a people have an unhealthy relationship with food and just trying to get people in the mindset of developing a healthy workforce,” said Mr Quant.
Comments
Economist 9 years, 4 months ago
If you think that is bad can you imagine the health costs.
This is why the country can't afford NHI.
Instead of talking about NHI the good Doctor Gomez should be trying to get the Bahamian people to be more healthy.
ThisIsOurs 9 years, 4 months ago
Must make healthy food an affordable option
samnorkeen 9 years, 4 months ago
A little good news: the study was wrong. First, the BMI is a miserable, inaccurate measurement. Second, all the studies of the BMI are based on Caucasians, who tend to be shorter and more broadly built than Bahamians. Third, the BMI is not a measure of fat. It is a ratio of height to weight, and nothing more.
I'm a mathematician who has studied obesity for over a decade, and I spent two years developing a scientific alternative to the BMI. My algorithm uses body stats, health history, exercise history, and lifestyle, and then calculates a range of healthy weight for each person. You can find it at www.weightzonefactor.com It is free - I'm happily retired.
ScullyUFO 9 years, 4 months ago
A fitness club owner is trying to get the government to subsidize fitness?
I am shocked.
sheeprunner12 9 years, 4 months ago
A person should be held responsible for his/her own health ......... if you don't take care of your body, you should pay the price .............. why should the government or a private company pay for your personal bad eating, drinking, sexing and partying habits?????
Why do we believe that someone must always take care of our slackness??????
newcitizen 9 years, 4 months ago
There are many reasons. The first being that the government is trying to bring in NHI, so therefore a person's bad health is now everyone's problem. The second is that people who are in bad health tend to take more sick days, have lower productivity and produce a lower quality of work. Companies invest lots of money into many of their employees through on the job training and having a healthy employee gives a better return on that investment.
You are correct that there is a mentality that other people will take care of our slackness, and that is something that needs to change. We have a problem in this country with taking responsibility.
Economist 9 years, 4 months ago
If the government insists on NHHI then it should be funded by taxes on unhealthy meals like Kentucky Fried chicken, fries, sodas etc. not from the salaries of the already over taxed worker.
afficianado 9 years, 4 months ago
There was a study done by University of Pittsburgh,which suggested that has a person becomes overweight or obese the actual size and function of their brain decreases. This study has allowed researches to coin the term " the dinosaur syndrome"-Big body little brain.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-am…
Some Bahamians need to do better and make proper food choices. A conch snack, chicken snack or any "snack" for that matter drowned in wesson oil with fries and a roll is not a complete meal. You are what you eat! If you eat garbage then you'll look like garbage.
Like the chinese proverb says, "Ignorance will not kill you, but it will make you sweat alot." Plenty Bahamians are "sweating" with high blood pressure, diabetes and cancer.
pablojay 9 years, 4 months ago
Mr. Quant has a point here as every time there is a gathering of people , say junkanoo, etc, the first comment ,especially if you are watching it on television is the amount of fat people we have. One of my friends like to say that we may have 350,000 people.but weight- wise we have over 600.000,
asiseeit 9 years, 4 months ago
The question should be, "Who can AFFORD to eat healthy?" Look at the price controlled crap, and then look at the price of Healthy greens and other foods. That will tell you right there why Bahamians are fat.
Chucky 9 years, 4 months ago
Shouldn't need to perform a "study" to realize that being overweight or obese affects productivity and therefore profit. All one has to do is open there eyes and watch a fat person move. if someone has even the slightest of a belly you know they are slow moving, they don't exercise or look after themselves, they don't eat right and therefore have little energy. Anyone that doesn't look after themselves properly is certainly not able to look after anything or anyone else properly.
If anyone in government really cared about the people, the first thing they would do is to ban all tobacco, junk food, soda, fast food and manufactured food, despite capitalist losses. Then they would fix the education system to include thorough coverage of health and fitness related knowledge. Then of course they could keep going and fix the rest of the education system etc etc
but nobody cares! That's proven every day!
killemwitdakno 9 years, 4 months ago
The damn heat affects productivity. That's why customer service is so disengaged. All people can do is smolder all day. LOWER ENERGY BILLS AND WATCH A TURNAROUND.
banker 9 years, 4 months ago
From an economics point of view, it is quite a conundrum. When I am at the supermarket, I take a look in the baskets to see what the people are buying. Working mothers with young children buy snacks of those small bags of chips, or inexpensive fruit snacks laced with sugar. Not only are these empty calories, but they contribute to obesity. Even if the parents knew about nutrition and healthy eating, the average wage in the Bahamas is not enough to eat well, unless a family is a two-income family with both partners with good jobs.
The minimum wage is not enough to live on, with the high food prices due to having all foodstuffs imported. Most service workers are not making much more than the minimum wage, and it is a poverty wage.
The reason it is an economics problem, is that due to the productivity of the Bahamian worker, they really can't be paid more. Unfortunately the human capital available, doesn't have a high enough intrinsic worth -- being virtually illiterate in language and math skills. And the majority of the cadre of workers fit into this category.
The survival foods for low-income people include the pastas and carbohydrates and that in turn leads to obesity, diabetes, low productivity due to the carb lethargy. It is a vicious circle, and I for one, do not see any answers that would quickly ameliorate the problem. It's an artifact of our economy, our society and our educational system.
Zakary 9 years, 4 months ago
The survival foods for low-income people include the pastas and carbohydrates and that in turn leads to obesity, diabetes, low productivity due to the carb lethargy. It is a vicious circle, and I for one, do not see any answers that would quickly ameliorate the problem. It's an artifact of our economy, our society and our educational system.
The banker is spot on as always. Low-income households operate under vastly different priorities than high income households when it comes to food. The fact is that healthy food is not a priority when your money is tight. Foods that give instant carbohydrates and makes you feel full are the priority.
A lot of Bahamians are living hand to mouth. Why do you think so many resort to ramen noodles? It works because you get a high carbohydrate density at a minimum cost. The drawback is that it leads to long term health problems.
As for those who work, eating healthy means that you have to take the time to cook the food. Healthy food is hardly ever cooked fast. How many people bring their own food to work? Not many.
The issue is simple, but not that complex either. There are some people who have the ability to take responsibility for their health, yet they don’t, and there are those who may want to take responsibility but because of their income, they stick with survival foods. We are losing or have already lost our society.
Chucky 9 years, 4 months ago
Hey Banker, good comment. Sadly the low productivity is a fact, though we cannot ignore the generally excessive profits made in business here, which are never passed on or shared to any degree with the workers. As an example, where else does a high end home builder make so much money that they can live in homes such as those found in Lyford or OFB, yet that is a common occurrence here. In the more "developed world" , a contractor who builds similar homes pays his employees much higher wages, builds the same or better quality homes for much less per sqft and lives more modestly.
Greed is a big factor in all of this; from the obvious lack of desire to educate the populace, to the "starve your employee mentality" that continues to persist.
I don't think this is a problem that can't be solved, though I'd agree if it ever is solved, it won't be anytime soon.
Change will only come if it comes from the bottom, and that means the people will have to claw their way out of the hole they inhabit.........
banker 9 years, 4 months ago
You are right about Bahamian workers being underpaid. I myself, worked construction while going to a foreign university (a student visa allowed one to work up to 24 hours per week). I showed up at 6:00 AM at a labour exchange and got a job within half an hour. The contractors paid us the same as the union members to avoid trouble with the unions. It was backbreaking work, but it paid about triple what the minimum wage was. I couldn't believe the money that I was making. I was making significantly more money at 24 hours a week than my relatives here with full time jobs.
The issues here are two-fold. The first is that Haitian labour will always work for cheaper wages, and second the minimum wage is so 1970's. How can you not hire a worker who has a better work ethic, and works for less out of personal desperation? As a result, Bahamians can't compete for unskilled jobs, which is all they can do.
There is a tougher problem. The domestic minimum wage is about $150 a week. The civil service minimum wage is just a bit over $11,000 per year or less than a thousand a month. In this day and age, with the cost of living in the Bahamas, the minimum wage of less than $10,000 a year is untenable. However, as pointed out earlier, in economics, one can valuate the work output of human capital with a multiplier based on economic worth. For example, if I pay someone to create goods or a service for me to sell, generally the value multiplier is twofold. In other words, if I can't sell it for double of what it cost me, I'm not making money -- when you factor in the cost of doing business, fees, accountants, my salary, etc. So if the person is being paid $10 for an hours worth of work, and I can't sell whatever they for $20, then that person is not worth the $10 that I paid. The numbers and value multipliers may be off, but you get the idea.
There are only so many hamburgers that Wendy's can sell, or so many pizzas that you can get at Marcos (didn't mean to plug the Greek family fast food tycoons, but I like their stuff -- although the hamburgers at Jimmy's aint bad). So if it costs more to make the maximum amount of hamburger or pizzas that they can sell in a day, then the economic value of the employees is not worth what they are paying them.
And because our economy is so monolithic and screwed up, I can get away with paying people their economic worth, which is low, and charge a heck of a lot more that the product is worth. This is true of the luxury homes. If you built the same home on Yamacraw Road as you did in Old Fort Bay or Lyford Cay, the cost to the buyer would be triple, the profits are triple, and yet the workers are paid the same.
If we did have a robust economy, and the demand for workers outstripped the supply, then there could be decent wages. But with a systemic structural unemployment rate of 13-15%, and a stalled GDP growth, that will never happen. The economy is more likely to implode.
Regardless 9 years, 4 months ago
What makes it even more problematic, is the percentage of the population who find fat pigs sexy. We should not forget either what great examples some members of parliament are on weight control!
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