Eight in 10 British workers are overweight or living with long-term illnesses that limit their productivity, according to early findings of a 25-year study of people's wellbeing.
Poor health and obesity is costing the economy at least £21.5bn a year and will prove a severe drag on any recovery from the recession, the study suggests.
Workers who are both overweight and have three or more health conditions – more than 10% of the total – are taking over three weeks' sick leave every year.
The findings come ahead of publication, due in October, of an independent review of sickness absence, commissioned by the government. That review is expected to warn that growing numbers of workers are living with long-term conditions and need greater support to do so.
According to the wellbeing study, based on initial telephone interviews with almost 4,000 full-time workers, only 20% are not overweight and have no health conditions, ranging from high blood pressure to cancer. Another 20% have a weight problem but no health conditions. But six in 10 have at least one condition and 16%, almost one in six, have three or more.
This is what is not being discussed in any Canadian election. We do talk about access to more healthcare - but we don't talk about why so many of us are ill and what so many of us being ill means.
It means that our illness and our inability to work will make an economic recovery impossible. As the trends look now, on PEI healthcare and disability costs will far exceed our tax base by the NEXT election. 3 years later it will be more than double that.
This is new. It is new that most of us will enter early middle age really sick and increasingly unable to work.
With a father who died aged 55 and a mother who has been disabled since she was in her 40's I decided last year to take charge of my own health. I did not want to be a burden to my family.
So what about you? What is your health like? Do you think that it is normal to have high blood pressure? To be overweight? To have type 2 diabetes? To have arthritis? Do you think you have no control over whether you will get cancer?
I thought that all of this was normal. But I don't now and nor should you.
Do you think that the system will be there to support you in 10 years time? How can it be? How can we have a health system that costs 2 times our taxes? How can we also pay your pension? Pave the roads? Educate our kids?
It just cannot happen if we think that it is normal that so many of us are ill.
Do you think that medicine will suddenly cure us? They have not so far. What they do is to treat us WHEN we are ill.
Do you have a choice? Of course you do. You can do nothing and you can so put your future and the future of your family in jeopardy. Or you can decide to take charge of your own health and make a contribution to your future and the future of your kids and all our kids.
You can be a kid or a grown up - what is it to be?