The fat Japanese? Japan Decides to Slim Down

A poster at a health clinic in Japan reads, “Goodbye, metabo,” a word associated with being overweight.

A high school friend of mine used to live in Asia, and he said one of the hardest things to get used to when he returned to the United States was to see how fat Americans are. You probably know, obesity, especially child obesity is a growing health care crisis in America. Well, in Japan, the Japanese are equally concerned, but the government is doing something about it, as reported in The New York Times, “Japan Decides to Measure Millions of Waists”

“…Under a national law that came into effect two months ago, companies and local governments must now measure the waistlines of Japanese people between the ages of 40 and 74 as part of their annual checkups. That represents more than 56 million waistlines, or about 44 percent of the entire population. Those exceeding government limits — 33.5 inches for men and 35.4 inches for women, which are identical to thresholds established in 2005 for Japan by the International Diabetes Federation as an easy guideline for identifying health risks — and having a weight-related ailment will be given dieting guidance if after three months they do not lose weight. If necessary, those people will be steered toward further re-education after six more months.”

The Japanese government will also penalize financially companies and local governments that fail to meet specific goals. For a democracy, this sounds quite draconian and an invasion of the personal freedom to choose how healthy we want to live. Japan does have an aging population with negative population growth, so as the country grows older, it does make sense that the government tries to improve its citizen’s health as well as decrease the cost of health care, as Japan has universal health care.

Could we ever adopt a law to encourage weight loss and a healthier lifestyle in the United States? I highly doubt it. But that has certainly not stopped national, state and local campaigns encouraging and educating children and adults alike the benefits of exercising and a healthy living style.

Personally, I wish my parents encouraged me more to actively exercise and instill such habits while growing up. I wasn’t really encourage to join any organized sports at school or outside of school. Generally, I’d say that Asian Americans appear to be fairly lucky that obesity doesn’t seem to be as endemic as it is in America as a whole. I haven’t noticed, but have any of you noticed that Asian Americans are getting bigger?