In January, Whole Foods’ CEO John Mackey sent a newsletter to his company’s employees introducing “The Team Members’ Healthy Discount Incentive Program.” The program cites its parameters using Body Mass Index (BMI), cholesterol, blood pressure and nicotine use. In a word, an employee who weighs less pays less.
This incentive program misuses BMI as an accurate measure of health and should not be used.
According to PreventDisease.com, BMI, which many health scientists believe to be junk, measures adult weight in relation to height without making a distinction between body weight from fat and body weight from muscle.
For instance, athletes usually qualify as “overweight” or “obese” according to BMI parameters.
What is even creepier about the program is the fact that the range of BMI that an employee falls in determines his discount. If the employee is “overweight,” with a BMI of more than 25, the employee is only eligible for a “gold status” discount of 27 percent.
However, if an employee qualifies as underweight, with a BMI of 24 or less, the employee gets a “platinum status” discount of 30 percent. A BMI of 30 or more disqualifies an employee from participating in the program.
The problem here is that BMI has failed repeatedly to prove that lower weight equates to better health. In addition, this hierarchical program only reinforces the notion that being fat, or more accurately, being “overweight” equals obesity. It is possible to have a BMI of 29 and be healthier than someone with a BMI of 24. It does not even accurately represent a person living a healthy and active lifestyle--just that a person weighs more or less in relation to his or her height.
It is almost insulting to its employees that the Whole Foods Market Scientific and Medical Advisory Board would even base a “healthy incentive program” on junk science.
There are other problems with the parameters as well. No one can use nicotine. Not even the patch. If an underweight employee with a platinum status discount is on the patch to kick a smoking habit, then too bad.
Another highly suspicious aspect that Mackey states in his newsletter is that healthcare costs are an issue for his company. They spent $150 million on healthcare. This incentive program is one way to help save the company money. The program is reminiscent of the proposed junk food taxes in Georgia and other states.
Those who proposed the tax, cite our nation’s dependency on salt, sugars and fats, which are prevalent in junk food. Tax the junk food and people will not purchase it. Well, not necessarily.
In this economy, people usually buy what they can afford. Anyone who has ever tried to save money in order to buy “organic” or “natural” products at Whole Foods knows that in the long run, it is more cost-effective to just purchase store-brand items at Kroger or Publix.
To offer a lesser discount to an employee who qualifies as “obese” and who may actually benefit from more affordable, healthy food misses the mark.
If Whole Foods means to offer healthy discount incentives, then it should do so fairly and accurately. More accurate measurements include waist circumference, waist-to-hip ratio, and body fat/lean mass composition.
It is great that Whole Foods wants to reward employees who are healthy, but why punish those who, according to inaccurate measurements, are not healthy?
BMI-based discount is unfair
Published: Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Updated: Wednesday, February 17, 2010
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