Risk & Insurance Online

For companies looking to battle the obesity epidemic, here's a thought. Get rid of the sugary drinks in the soda machines sitting in your lunch rooms and in the corridors of the corporate campus.

Replace all those soft drinks with different kinds of water: plain water, vitamin water, Pellegrino and Perrier water. Water with big bubbles, water with small bubbles, hot water, ice water, any kind of water, so long as the choices contain no sugar.

It's said that Henry Ford was all for giving his customers as many color options for their Model T, so long as it was black. Here's my take: Companies can give employees any choice of drinks they want, so long as it's water. Loading up on water isn't a guarantee that anyone will lose weight, but it's a perfect way to set an example.

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As I was watching the HBO documentary "Weight of the Nation" last month, a few days after the latest releases of obesity trend reports, I was struck by a remarkable fact. Exercise rarely burns off as many calories as you think. The few hundred calories that disappear during a mild hour-long jog are more than made up by eating one Snickers bar.

Exercise and wellness programs are good. Diets, when they work, are fine too. But let's face it. Some of those programs are expensive, and their record of success is often spotty.

Sipping water instead of downing a Big Gulp is a lot cheaper for your wallet and a lot easier on your health. Best of all, water works on a sounder logical premise: If you don't ingest calories in the first place, you don't need to bother looking for ways to lose them. How's that for a benefit?

June 1, 2012

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