From a New York Times article, Fight Against Fat Moves to the Workplace:

Programs that nudge people to move more or eat better are responding to a growing public health crisis: the federal Department of Health and Human Services puts the cost of overweight and obese Americans at $117 billion in 2000, and said that being overweight results in 300,000 deaths a year.

“There are times when we as a nation feel that personal responsibility is not getting the job done, and so we have to take action,” said Kelly D. Brownell, director of the Yale University Center for Eating and Weight Disorders. “We could count on parents to get their children immunized, but they don’t, therefore we require it. We could count on people being responsible and not smoking cigarettes, but we have a huge health crisis brought on by people smoking cigarettes.”

It’s time our work culture provided incentive to be more active, although I would not want to see it being made a condition of employment, nor a law permitting this. Is there no other way to get Americans moving than to force them?