It’s Not Just the Fight Against Hunger That Needs Holiday Appeals but the Fight Against Obesity

During the holiday season, the problem of hunger gets plenty of attention—and food banks see a big rise in donations. What gets less attention year-round, is the fact that 34 percent of adults in the United States are obese, often because they can’t regularly afford enough food for themselves and their families.

Fourteen percent of Americans lack the ability to pay for sufficient food every day, and that is a big reason for the obesity epidemic.

Solving the problems of obesity and poverty is a complex undertaking, but we must if America hopes to curb long-term health-care costs. Currently, 95 percent of every health-care dollar is spent treating illnesses and conditions after they occur. If, as a country, we are able to prevent Americans from facing chronic conditions such as high blood pressure and arthritis—many of which result from obesity, we will not only greatly reduce long-term health-care costs but also ensure a better quality of life for everyone.

Without a doubt, it is less expensive to treat the kinds of behavior that cause health trouble than to pay for treatment of those with serious ailments. For instance, it is less expensive to lose 10 percent of one’s body weight and reduce the risk of diabetes than it is to treat diabetes.

But in households that face the challenge of putting enough food on the table for the entire family, the ability to think about preventing disease is simply unfathomable.

According to several independent studies, low-income households frequently must choose cheaper foods, which often have lower nutritional values than higher quality, more expensive foods such as fruits and vegetables. In fact, according to a recent analysis prepared by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, nearly 15 percent of U.S. households cannot regularly afford to feed their families and are therefore at risk of disease.

While many of these families participate in valuable federal nutrition-assistance programs, getting access to healthier, higher-quality foods can still be a challenge. The result is a perpetual cycle of increased obesity and its related chronic conditions, such as coronary heart disease and stroke.

Share Our Strength, a national nonprofit dedicated to eradicating domestic childhood hunger, tracks numerous statistics on its Web site that point to the harm youngsters face because they lack access to healthy food. Nearly 17 million children in the United States struggle with periods of hunger, and many of them tend to be sick more often and recover more slowly. They are also more likely to be hospitalized, at an average cost of $12,000 per pediatric stay. In addition, they are more susceptible to obesity and its harmful health consequences well into adulthood.

The number of children at risk is growing. More than 41 percent of those children live in families that are at or below the poverty line—34 percent more than one year ago. Many low-income people lack access to basic health care, and if health care is even available, it is of lower quality, notes the Food Research and Action Center. Unfortunately, the likely result is that emerging chronic health problems, such as obesity, will go undetected and untreated.

Over the years, Weight Watchers has witnessed obesity and hunger becoming two sides of the same coin. In an effort to do our part to help solve this wrenching problem, Weight Watchers created Lose for Good.

We started with a local version of the program, which was created by a Seattle employee who leads meetings for people trying to lose weight, and we made it a national campaign.

For the past three years, while thousands of our members have been losing weight and adopting a healthier way of life, we encouraged them to contribute a similar amount of weight in the form of food to their local area food banks. Weight Watchers nationally simultaneously made cash contributions at pace with weight loss to two hunger-fighting organizations, Action Against Hunger and Share Our Strength. Essentially, our members have been able to help their own health while helping a neighbor in need.

To date, more than $2-million and 3.5 million pounds of food have been generated through Lose for Good to ensure that vulnerable populations have the opportunity to make a healthy choice for themselves and their families. We have worked with Share our Strength and Action Against Hunger to provide treatment for 12,000 malnourished children around the world, put in place education programs for American schoolchildren, and awarded more than 50 grants in 31 states and the District of Columbia to help increase access to healthy foods for children by financing programs that provide after-school snacks and summer meals.

Programs like Lose for Good cannot solve the problems of obesity and hunger by themselves, but we hope they will serve as useful examples to other organizations and communities that are searching for ways to increase the availability of healthy food to those neighborhoods that need it the most. Ultimately, we believe that both hunger and obesity are solvable issues—but solving them requires more people and companies to join the fight.

David Kirchhoff is chief executive of Weight Watchers.