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This has been going on for three years, yet I just learned of it:
In 2008, Japan’s Ministry of Health passed the ‘metabo’ law and declared war against obesity. …
Japanese people are normally envied for their lean physiques. In fact, the OECD ranks them, with only 3% population obesity, one of the least obese developed countries. … Comparing the time periods 1976-1980 and 1996-2000, prevalence of obese boys and girls increased from 6.1% and 7.1% to 11.1% and 10.2%. …
The law mandates that local governments and employers add a waist measurement test to the annual mandatory check up of 40-75 year olds. For men and women who fail the test and exceed the maximum allowed waist length of 33.5 and 35.4 inches, they are required to attend a combination of counseling sessions, monitoring through phone and email correspondence, and motivational support. …
Employers or local government … are required to ensure a minimum of 65% participation, with an overall goal to cut the country’s obesity rates by 25% by year 2015. Failure to meet these goals results in fines of almost 10% of current health payments. (more)
Even before Japanese lawmakers set the waistline limits last year, the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) amended its recommended guidelines for the Japanese. The new IDF standard is 90 centimeters (35.4 inches) for men and 80 centimeters (31.5 inches) for women. But the Japanese government has yet to modify its limits. (more; HT Melanie Meng Xue)
Two interesting patterns:
Japanese waist limits are stricter on men, yet since men are taller health-based rules would be stricter on women.
The thinnest rich nation (Japan) passed a big law to make itself thinner just as the biggest medical spending nation (USA) debated a big law (Obamacare) ensuring it would spend more on medicine.
My tentative explanations:
Most societies find it easier to disrespect/mistreat/etc. low status men than low status women.
National policy is more about reaffirming and supporting symbols of national pride than about addressing national needs. The USA is proud of its medicine and Japan is proud of its thinness.
Note that that if you want to regulate health it makes far more sense to regulate weight than medicine, since weight is far more related to health than medicine.
Japan’s Fat Tax
Lots of comments; hear are my thoughts;
I am 42 male 6ft tall 84 kg, a little overweight in my book with a BMI of 25. Normally I want to be at 80 kg(24 bmi). I know when I am healthy range and when I have eaten too much junk food. For me staying healthy is important and so I can hit the gym, cycle, i monitor what I eat and my weight goes down. If the calories I burn each day are more than I consume my weight drops; you cant argue that. Access to ultra processed foods has rapidly increased; take away, fast food, sugary softdrinks etc. schools in many oecd countries have reduced the amount of exercises kids do at school (bad policy- this is a preventative approach all govt need to teach kids that exercise is as important as eating). That you must exercise as part of living.
There is the complexity of metro areas vs rural and remote; in australia we have a gap problem; those in rural remote areas are fatter, sicker, poorer, and have less access to services loke gyms and yoga and worse food security (food costs more and isnt as healthy)
Corporations are taxing healthy foods by charging more. A 1.25 litre coke often is cheaper than the same volume mineral water. Per calorie its cheaper to buy corn chips than it is bananas. We need to make healthy food choices the cheapest option, by subsidizing a basket of healthy foods avail to all and taxing the hell out of unhealthy foods. There is obviously a problem in agreeing which foods are healthy and which unhealthy; again corporations have intentionally confused matters in their strive to maximising profits off peoples waist lines with easy to consume meals.
We have a problem worldwide of an ever increasing aging population; and as people get older their wealth generally increases, they eat more, they exercise less, their metabolism starts slowing down and then the amount of calories consumed exceed the amount burned and they get fat.
We have an issue of body positivity. Body positivity is a great thing; but promoting being fat is healthy is a crime imho. Being fat isnt healthy or something we should be celebrating. Ask any fat person if they feel good about their weight; most wont be. We need to help and encourage people to loose weight but to do it finding an activity each person loves. A few extra pounds is fine, everything in moderation right.
Many oecd countries have spent their healthcare funding on health treatment and not prevention. Investing billions into hospitals and specialist capabilties in the metro that treat an existing condition. 92% of type 2 diabetics are overweight or obese. Solving obesity would almost solve type 2 diabetes overnight. Govts must work better together at local state and fed level to create community level prevention health initiatives to stop people getting sick and going to hospital in the first place. Thats a big complex challenge as it involvef changing population level personal preferences / tastes/ social norms.
Japan is the oecd country with the lowest obesity rates. Interestingly they also live the longest. See the connection? All these other oecd countries, US, NZ, Australia etc are taxing unhealthy foods generating revenue for the govt that isnt going back into preventative medicine but instead used as a revenue generation tool. And its not working. People are still getting fatter and fatter. We must get stricter and more serious about this global epidemic. What i really like about Japan metabo law is it works. And its preventative. And with all countries havingnan ever increasing aging population we all must work better on preventative medicine. At the moment the health burden is disproportionately to older people who get sick more often. If we can change social norms of kids, that become adults and then elderly: if they all start eating bettter and exercising more this can solve the obesity issue or help it a lot. Its about progress not perfection. And we are going backwards at the moment.
Society norms need to change. We should be charging fat people more to fly. A plane can only carry so much. If i am 80 kg and thr person next to me is 120 kg it is easy to work out they cost more to travel, more fuel, they should pay more
Fat people, smokers, etc should be identified for private insurance and pay more. The healthy people not getting sick who arent fat and eating well and exercising also cost less on the health system. So we need to get harsh on obesity at every level and make it cost more to be fat. Hold people accountable for their choices.
This way a fat person can choose to be fat if they want but they pay more
We subsidize healthy foods to make them the cheapest and we make unhealthy foods very expensive like cigarettes. People can still consume coke but its 10/per litre, not 1 dollar.
And we subsidize healthy foods. We know this means people would then buy healthier foods because its cheaper. Many fast food companies might go bankrupt, this needs to happen to shock our system back onto a path of healthy living. There will be enormous push back on companies at risk of loosing their business of feeding junk food to people.
We shouldnt shame fat people. As we know bullying or harrassment causes poor mental health. And we know motivating someone has a positive effect on further positive behaviour. As a society we need to become more encouraging to help others loose weight.
It stands to argue that Japan is the ONLY oecd country that has a handle of preventing its population of getting too fat. The country has realised as its people age there will be greater per lifetime burden on the health system and a preventative approach is critical to mantaining healthcare costs at an aggregate level. Its high time we stop saying being fat is ok. Its high time we all take a preventative approach. And its time for govt to shift their policies and start helping communities; govt have a key tesponsibility to create policy and taxes that shift society and population level trends/ patterns. For too long govt workers have not been held accountable. So there should be KPIs put in place against politicians and senior govt workers that if the population doesnt loose weight; they loose their jobs. Thats simple. We myst start making the govt more accountable as they are meant to look after society in a lot of ways. Health MUST be considered a Public good. Like defence spending. And its the govt responsibility (and individual people) to impact and change how society views being healthy/ unhealthy.
My two cents.
Its not an easy fix; but there is a lot more we can all do as individuals and as communicites, as corporations and as govt stakeholders. It will require a collective effort.
Well, you are partially correct. But there are actually a few factors that can cause an otherwise effective fat loss plan (as a trainer I do not ever talk about weight loss, weight loss is not the goal, fat loss is. If you lose weight, but the majority of it is muscle, that is detrimental to your long term health... this is why losing weight the traditional way that is following a low fat, grain based diet, in a 500 cal/day deficit and performing 30 minutes of moderate intensity steady state cardio is a prescription for failure, and long term poor health. I make it my mission to try to eliminate the entire concept of weight control through thermogenesis, it is flat out barbaric, antiquated and destined to fail in the long run. I had a paper on this topic published in Fitness Trainer Magazine. That tangent got long...) anyways... as you may or may not know, the human body is actually comprised of an almost equal number of human cells and bacteria cells, yes you are half bacteria, and those bacteria play a large role in keeping you alive and regulating your metabolism and body weight. Depending on the diversity and makeup of your gut flora, it can either aid in keeping you fit an trim, or it can derail all efforts and make weight loss seem impossible for some people. Admittedly, this is not my area of expertise, and typically do not initially address it with clients... but there is a good reason for that ... my focus is primarily on balancing and optimizeing hormones. hormones are the most powerful tool we have for shaping our bodies and our health. Hormones can be manipulated by following specific training and dietary protocols designed to elicit a specific response at a specific time. This approach is exponentially more effective than the mainstream recommended approach I belittled earlier. Finally because gut biodiversity is, at least in part, influenced by lifestyle factors - including in large part diet, by following my approach, gut microbes tend to balance themselves naturally over time... for most people. There are people with what is known as candida gut, which is characterized by excessive overgrowth of a single, pro inflammatory gut microbe that also makes it very difficult to lose fat - Candida. In exteme cases a fecal from a person with a healthy gut biom has been effective in restoring balance.