ChelseyKelsey says:
Sat, 13th Mar 20108:46 am 

I could see where this would also encourage eating disorders!

BMI are a terrible measure of weight.

Muscle weighs more than fat, and as a result increases your BMI.

Mintii says:
Sat, 13th Mar 20108:52 am 

I remember reading about this almost a month ago and many of the comments thought it was unfair to discriminate against the size of a person. Science today finds more and more biological reasons to why a person's size is that particular weight without the added effect to a person's lifestyle.

Removing the outlying instances where a person is massively overweight or underweight, of course.

Jenn says:
Sat, 13th Mar 20108:58 am 

This is absolutely ridiculous! It could definitely cause people with eating disorders to get worse, or even those that don't have them to get obsessed with food and weight when they don't need to be. everyBODY is different!

Erin says:
Sat, 13th Mar 201010:12 am 

I feel like if they really wanted to help their overweight employees they would give them the discount. Part of the reason many people are over weight is that buying healthy food is much more expensive and usually more time consuming to cook. I feel that it's discrimination under the guise of promoting health. They should give everyone the same discount and then no one is discriminated against.

Leigha says:
Sat, 13th Mar 201010:55 am 

BMI is not really an accurate portrayal of health anyway. My friend's brother is RIPPED and has maybe 5% body fat, but according to his BMI, he's overweight. Or you could be naturally thin but not actually in shape at all.

Sarabeth - Universit says:
Sat, 13th Mar 201011:26 am 

i think bmi is a terrible way to measure this since it doesn't take into account muscle. I'm 5'7" and fit into a size 10 jean but according to my BMI i'm obese. BMI has been proven over and over again to be an inaccurate measure of "fatness". Not to mention that what whole foods is doing is pure prejudice. Way to go snooty foodies.

Victoria says:
Sat, 13th Mar 201011:50 am 

For clarification's sake, all Whole Foods employees get a 20% discount. This is a voluntary program where employees can earn an extra 10% discount. And the BMI is only one determinant. For example, you don't qualify at all for the extra discount if you use tobacco. Also, if you have a healthy BMI but bad cholesterol, you will only get a partial discount bonus. To qualify for the full discount, your BMI only has to be lower than 24; higher than that and you're already in the "overweight" BMI category.

In fact, you can still get partial discounts depending on where you are in the overweight category. It looks like this is indeed targeted towards their overweight employees as well as those with high cholesterol and smoking habits. I don't see anything wrong or discriminatory about it.

allie says:
Sat, 13th Mar 201012:58 pm 

i agree with the above. im what you would consider obese, have been my whole life. first health foods are ten times more expensive, what are you going to buy, double cheese burger for a dollor or lettice for five dollors, come on think about it. this to me is like giving the rich a tax break and excluding the poor. first things first you would think that by helping them they would give discounts. i know if somebody gave me discounts to whole foods where i could actually pay for it i know i would use it and try to lose weight. now if their giving discounts to people who already lost weight, i mean a lot, then thats cool they need to keep that going, but there are people biologically designed to be bigger, i dont mean obese but they are bigger and have a harder time losing weight. i should know im one of them. im still obese even though i lost 100 pounds, i use to weigh 380 pounds, now im 280 or 290 on a bad day. im also dont make a lot, so its hard for me to be like, yea i'll take that healthy snack, oh wait it cost how much F#ck that S@#t im going to burger king. thats just the truth. we need to make good healthy food available to everybody, especially people who cant afford healthy food.

karol says:
Sat, 13th Mar 20108:00 pm 

healthy food is NOT more expensive. I'm a college student with NO money and i manage to eat healthy…. a double cheeseburger is a dollar but so is a sandwich on whole wheat bread when you make it at home when you really add it up. People who say they cant eat healthy are just making excuses for their unhealthy habit. Yes, it does take a little more time to actually prepare your meals instead being lazy and picking the drive thru. If you can't make healthy choice on a regular basis I doubt you'd make them even with a discount. It's about having that willpower to give up bad habits and start making the right choices in life. It's really not that hard

Emily says:
Sat, 13th Mar 20109:55 pm 

Calculating this by BMI doesn't make this discriminatory if your biologically predestined to be heavier. Its giving employees discounts by being the healthiest for their body type. I say bravo, people don't need to be skinnier, just healthier in general.

Dani says:
Sun, 14th Mar 20104:52 am 

wow, whole foods.. providing a scaled incentive for me to be skinnier/weigh less? from an eating disorder standpoint, i think i would find this extraordinarily triggering.

Brittney says:
Sun, 14th Mar 20105:02 am 

Isn't using BMI as a measure of health a flawed system, because someone who is really muscular and fit (who weighs a bit more because of all their muscle mass) could have the same BMI as someone who is obese? Whole Foods could potentially be discriminating against people who are super fit as well as people who aren't stick thin.

Tamara says:
Sun, 14th Mar 20105:41 am 

I have a question: how about unhealthyly low BMI? Do they make discounts for those too, or there's a limit? I'm just a little below my ideal weight (trying to get there the healthy way, building a bit more muscle, certainly not as easy as it would be going for a Supersize me experience), but it would be unhealthy for me to lose a lot of weight. Do they encourage healthy people to lose even more weight?? That would definitely be wrong.

And muscley people may have the BMI of a slightly overweight person, but if they weight like an obese person, they are in trouble too; one of the trainers in my gym had to lose some muscle because the doctor said he was putting too much weight in his bones and it was dangerous. So that people should also be encouraged to lose weight.

And about the measure, I agree with everyone that says the right way to encourage weight lost would be maiking the disscount to the obese, and not to the already thin.

Casey says:
Sun, 14th Mar 201010:14 am 

The thing about making the discount for the obese is that that wouldn't actually ENCOURAGE them to lose weight, since if they LOST weight, they would also LOSE their obesity discount, it doesn't give them a reason to change their habits. People shouldn't be rewarded for being unhealthy, giving the discount to already HEALTHY people (not skinny people) would encourage people at unhealthy weights to either loose or gain weight, depending on their situation. You have to work for something to get something. It's unfair to get something for nothing.

And I think it's also rather unfair that so many of you seem to think this will cause people to develop eating disorders. Do you have no faith that people can make the right decisions? From what I know about how eating disorders affect people, which admittedly isn't much, so I don't mean to be offensive and please correct me if I'm wrong, but they are psychological, which means nothing but your own mentality about food and health are going to cause you to develop one, you either have it and it can be "triggered", or you don't and nothing external is going to make you develop one if you don't have that mentality to begin with?

That being said, I think this is a good idea overall, they may need to tweak some things, like finding a different way to determine a healthy weight besides BMI, and to eliminate the possibility of eating disorders, a program to help the unhealthy employees to obtain the discount. But considering this is whole foods we're talking about, most employees are likely already healthy anyway.

Casey says:
Sun, 14th Mar 201010:18 am 

Oh I meant to add that I also don't think it's fair to jump to the conclusion that the company is being discriminatory. Just because people do something that discriminates doesn't mean that was their intention and on top of that, lots of things are discriminatory if you don't take into account the fact that something is being EARNED. And in this situation the discount is something that employees must earn. I think Whole Foods intentions are good, and that they aren't doing this because they want to "stick it to the fatties", or whatever you guys think.

Mari says:
Mon, 15th Mar 20109:52 am 

I have suffered from an eating disorder for many, many years. Only recently have i been able to maintain a more healthy weight, however according to the BMI scale i am overweight. I find this idea of getting a discout for being thin very triggering to my eating disorder because it tells me that in order to be accepted or treated special, i need to be thin. And if i am fat i have to pay more, making me the loser.

nerdygirlatw says:
Mon, 15th Mar 20105:29 pm 

I would also assume that BMI would be evaluated the other way…like below 18 was bad as well… so it's not just about being skinny

http://www.nerdygirlatw.com

Sydney says:
Mon, 15th Mar 20108:40 pm 

I think it’d be more accurate if they used a body fat assessment, like the three-fold skin test. It’s not perfect by any means, but BMI can be quite inaccurate in people who are more muscular.

Hannah says:
Tue, 16th Mar 20103:42 am 

Regardless of arguments for or against the discount, I think it's a bit ridiculous to insinuate that it would trigger eating disorders. During high school I had problems with bulimia and have since entirely dealt with the issue. However, even thinking back to that time in my life, I can't imagine being inspired to purge just because I wanted a discount at Whole Foods. And anyway, it's not really about being "skinny" is it? It hardly sounds like they are subjectively judging people by their physical appearance, and while, yes, BMI can be inaccurate for some people, the inaccuracy typically only applies to people who are carrying a fair amount of muscle (ie. athletes). Even at my heaviest (45 lbs more than I am now) I was just at the top end of the "healthy" bracket for my height. So, at least to me, it seems to be one of those things where just because people hear that it's not always the best determinant of CERTAIN peoples' health, everyone who has perhaps not the best BMI jumps on the inaccuracy bandwagon.

Margo M says:
Tue, 16th Mar 20103:25 pm 

This is ridiculous. There are some cases where a low BMI is impossible, and some cases where a BMI can be too low–what is whole foods going to do– give the customer free food.

I think this was a very poor stretegy and needs a do-over.

Caralynne says:
Thu, 18th Mar 201010:29 am 

I appreciate what they're trying to do as well, and I think they had good intentions. As a few of the other posters have already mentioned, anyone working at a Whole Foods store is probably a healthy eater already. However, I also have to cautiously agree with those mentioning the innaccuracies of BMI as a measure of fitness/health when someone is an athlete. I'm a girl, and I've always been smack in the middle of the BMI range until about a year ago, when I started doing weightlifting and strength training (in addition to competitive soccer/running like I always do). I put on seven pounds of muscle mass, even though I changed virtually nothing else about my diet/exercise (plus, I could tell it was muscle by how I looked), and my BMI crept upwards towards "overweight," even though I actually lost fat mass.

So even though I think that they'd probably make an exception for people who are obviously muscular, I think it's a dangerous place to tread.

robert says:
Mon, 22nd Mar 201012:12 pm 

just a clarification on this information. BMI is not the only thing being looked at in this discount program. Cholesterol levels, blood pressure, nicotine use were all factors in determining the discount given to the team members. it's great to have incentives to improve the quality of your life and help with finances. please be sure to get all the facts on a situation and perhaps the opinions of those participating before forming an 'opinion' on this pilot program.

Mark says:
Tue, 23rd Mar 201011:03 am 

Wow, I never even knew New Jersey and New York banned foods with trans fat in it. That is absolutely pitiful that they're actually limiting your choice of the freedom to buy any goddamn food you want. Goddamn stupid if you ask me. 95% of the time it is the person's fault that they're fat as fuck, so stop fucking complaining about it. Why don't you actually work out like I did. I was 14 years old, fat as hell, and you know what I did? I worked out. So why don't you all do the same?

I know some people simply can't help their disgusting rolls, but I'm not talking to the minority. This is absolutely retarded, a discount for being thin based on BMI? What the fuck is this shit, first of all BMI is the worst possible way of measuring a person, second of all this is so incredibly discriminatory it makes me puke. People really need to think about what the fuck they're doing before adding such incredibly stupid ideas like this.

Debby says:
Thu, 22nd Jul 20105:04 am 

Thinner people are already treated much better by society. When I was thinner, it was so much easier to make friends. I had a bizarre weight gain and went to different doctors who only dismissed me with "you must be eating too much." Turns out I had bad varicose veins, a thyroid problem, and lymphedema.

I really can't believe how cruel our society is and how much it punishes people for not looking beautiful. I don't have low self esteem because I know I didn't gain this weight through eating too much or laziness and when people are just so over the top insensitive, it reflects much more on them than on me.

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