Employers and local governments are obliged by law to ensure these exams happen, and when people come in above the limits of 33.5 inches for men and 35.4 inches for women, they must voluntarily reduce the bulge, and if that fails in three months, attend voluntary counseling.
A couple of quick comparisons here with us Americans, who are of course much heftier than probably 99 percent of the Japanese: Very few American men 40 to 74 would fit in 33.5-inch pants (they'd be lucky to squeeze into 36 inches), and though I can't speak for American women and their waistlines, I'm curious as to why the Japanese standard for females is larger than for males.
The International Diabetes Federation's guidelines establish 40 inches for American men and 34.6 inches for women in the waist department. Men in the U.S. come in, on average, an inch below the worry line at 39 inches, while women come out ahead at 36.5 inches.
Anyway, the Japanese goal is reduce people's weight by 10 percent over the next four years and 25 percent over the next ten years. Financial penalties await both companies and local governments whose charges fail to reach government benchmarks.
I'm not kidding--fines will be assessed.
(The waist rule came about over a proposal by the prime minister to charge people 75 or older more for their insurance, so this is something of a compromise.)
The goal of all this, of course, is to reduce obesity-based disease and cut health care costs. The Japanese, it appears, are all worked up over something called metabolic syndrome, which causes vascular diseases and diabetes. (I just call it the fatso syndrome, a club to which I aspire between bouts of depressing diets.)
The Japanese public has popularized the whole concept by calling those who are overweight metabo, short for metabolic. They've even developed catchy little tunes, to which they sometimes dance:
“Goodbye, metabolic. Let’s get our checkups together. Go! Go! Go!
Goodbye, metabolic. Don’t wait till you get sick. No! No! No!”
A survey of British doctors also finds that half of them think that fatsoes should be charged for their health care, so the public doesn't have to subsidize the extra costs of fat-related diseases.
It's a good thing that Tom Daschle hoisted himself by his own petard by failing to pay taxes. Had he become Health and Human Services secretary and health care czar, he had his eyes fixed on a National Health Board, which could indeed--in all its folly--target the American public with a similar edict.
You know? "America, Get Thin or Get Out!" (Kind of like, "America, Love It or Leave It" in a liberal's interpretation.)
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