Kate Middleton

Football fat has another way of impacting the health of our nation.  It is less direct, but broader, because it affects everyone.  To discuss this wider impact, let’s talk about the Dutchess of Cambridge, a shoe company, and Joe Camel.

In 2011, Wolverine Worldwide set sales records by moving $1.4 billion dollars of footwear.  Although Wolverine is primarily known for its sturdy boots and casual Hush Puppies, one of its stars of the year was a lesser-known brand: Sebago. 

Sebago sales took off when Kate Middleton took a Canadian boat tour in mid-July.  On one of the days of her voyage she wore Sebago boat shoes.  And all of a sudden, sales started to take off. 

Now, Sebago boat shoes are just great.  They’re well-made and look very nice.  However, they were just as well-made and good-looking before Kate Middleton slipped them on over her shapely toes.  The association of the product with an admired, extremely attractive individual didn’t change the product, but it certainly changed the product’s perceived value.

Hundreds of billions of dollars are spent each year to chase after this branding effect.  According to Forbes magazine, Michael Jordan’s brand generated $1 billion in sales to Nike alone—eight years after Jordan had last played competitive basketball.  The effect is obviously a powerful one: we want to become more like the people we admire, and we’re willing to pay good money to try to do so.

Cigarettes again provide useful insight.  When television and radio advertising were banned in 1964, approximately 42% of the American adults smoked.  After five years without television and radio branding, the figure was down to 37%.  By 1990, it was down to a quarter of American adults, and now it is fewer than one in five.  Branding changes what is perceived as acceptable or desirable.

This effect is not only driven by advertisements and celebrities; we change to become more like the peers we admire as well.  Recent research by Mir M. Ali, Aliaksandr Amialchuk, and Frank W. Heiland concludes that “[t]he social transmission of weight-related behaviors is a viable explanation for the spread of obesity in friendship networks”.  If a young person spends time with others who eat fast food, shun exercise, and gain weight, that young person is more likely to fall in line.

Another study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, studied over 12,000 people and examined what happened when one person gained weight.  The study made a shocking discovery: when someone’s friend became obese, that person was 37% more likely to become obese themselves.  News outlets jumped on this report: fat can be contagious.

We become what we admire, and we become what we habitually see.  Have we reached a tipping point, then, with regard to obesity? 

The statistics are shocking: percentage of obese Americans (BMI > 30) has tripled since 1960.   The percentage of morbidly obese Americans (BMI > 40) has risen by five hundred percent.  Obesity costs America $190 billion dollars a year in health costs; that’s over 20% of every medical expense in the nation.

Because obesity is strongly correlated with higher absenteeism from work, Eric Finkelstein of Duke University estimates that obese Americans cost businesses $30 billion dollars, simply due to lost productivity.  And because our cars have to lug overweight Americans around, they burn a billion more gallons of gas than they would if we weighed the same as we did fifty years ago.

What does any of this have to do with football?

Well, certainly thousands of young men whose coaches pressure them into bulking up contribute directly to the issue; however, reasonable people ought to conclude that the effect of branding plays a role.

Little Johnny sees Big Bubba Lineman and his belly tumbling around on national television.  Dad loves Big Bubba, which means that Johnny does, too.  When Johnny starts to notice his own little bundle of blubber, he’s downright proud of it; he’s a little more like that guy on TV.

Don’t believe it?  Here’s a the way an article on bleacherreport.com introduced a slideshow called “Glutton Bowl”:

“[T]his is American football. We like to drink multiple beers with hot dogs and hamburgers at 10 a.m. before the games officially kick off.

Isn't it natural for us to be drawn to the big guys that get it done on the field every week? As a big guy myself, I have to be honest—I tend to cheer a little bit harder for the fat boys.

Here's an homage to the guys that do their part to re-define what a professional athlete looks like—these are the men that made it honorable to be huge.”

Sound familiar?  If it doesn’t, you haven’t been paying attention.  Football coverage is replete with similar examples.  The sport can’t hide from the obesity, so it revels in it.  Fat is glorfied.

If branding is powerful and fat can be contagious, can the impact of all these hulking bulks be anything but detrimental?  Are there millions of Americans who can thank football for thinking it is “honorable to be huge”?  Have we somehow made it un-American to be healthy, and American to be disgustingly obese?

If so, it costs us billions of dollars.  More importantly, obesity kills as many as a thousand people every day. 

In nine years, the nation has lost over 4,000 soldiers in Iraq; obesity kills more people every week.  We glorify obesity at our peril