By: Margaret Webb Pressler

November 24, 2003, The Washington Post

Pity Debora Senytka, a design engineer in General Motors' human/vehicle integration department. Her challenge: to create normal-looking vehicles that can accommodate the expanding derrieres bottom lines of the expanding American without giving up the cup holders and consoles, DVD screens and air bags that drivers have come to expect.

America's growing obesity "was never considered" up until five years ago, Senytka said. Now it's "a very real situation." The problem is finding the space to fit a wider passenger "because there's so much more going into a vehicle than there was 10 years ago."

The automotive industry isn't the only business feeling America's weight problem. Companies of all kinds are adjusting their designs, measurements, marketing, menus and training in an effort to find ways to prevent, accommodate - and profit from - growing waistlines.

But obesity hasn't been easy for many businesses to deal with. Some embrace it, others are scared of it, and some just won't talk about it. That's the typical reaction of American business to any "momentous sea change in the public," said Bobby Calder, a marketing professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

"That's the model you'd learn from history," he said, such as the rising Hispanic population, or the sudden widespread Internet use. "First there's the threat, [then] it sets in that people really care about it and there's a consciousness about it, so there's got to be a marketing opportunity."

When it comes to obesity, American business is in the midst of that transition.

It's no news that in the past 20 years, obesity has skyrocketed: Nearly a third of all adult Americans, or about 62 million people, have a body mass index, or BMI, of greater than 30, which is the clinical definition of obesity. That's the equivalent of a 5-foot-5-inch woman weighing 180 pounds or a 5-foot-11-inch man weighing 215 pounds.

Only about a third of Americans have a BMI between 18.5 and 25, which is considered healthy. Another third of the population is merely overweight.

A number of studies have tried to pinpoint the root causes of growing waistlines - and many put the restaurant and food industries squarely in the middle of the debate.

That quickly altered the political, regulatory and cultural landscape for the industry, which once enjoyed an unblemished reputation as the feel-good provider of food for our tables and entertainment for our evenings out. Now some trial lawyers are suggesting that food companies could become the next Big Tobacco-style litigation target.

Food changes

The industry is also battling potential new regulation, such as the various proposals to require fat and calorie counts on menus at chain restaurants.

The attitude of restaurant chains and food makers is just beginning to turn. It started in July when Kraft announced it would rework many products to make them healthier, reduce some portion sizes and stop marketing in schools.

McDonald's introduced a line of salads under mounting criticism about its unhealthy foods and the specter of litigation, and immediately sales got a much-needed boost. Now there's hardly a chain restaurant out there that isn't putting healthier fare on its menu and promoting that fact to the hilt.

"What they hit upon was the general marketing opportunity that they should have discovered by realizing that they needed to balance their menu with some healthier choices," said marketing professor Calder.

Not all food manufacturers are on the same page, however. The TV commercial for Swanson Hungry-Man dinners, each containing a pound of food, shows a hearty eater blowing his dieting pal away with a hair dryer, followed by the tag line, "It's good to be full."

Plus-size business

The apparel business has been scared of fat people for years. Department stores treated plus-size customers with near disdain, putting clothing for larger women on the third floor in the back by the restrooms.

Then regular retail sales softened, and when executives went looking for the reason, they found all those overweight people. Plus sizes for men and women now represent 23 percent of all the retail dollars spent on apparel, according to NPD Fashionworld, a market research firm.

"For the longest time the designers didn't want to ruin the reputation of their brand by having anyone who was overweight walking around in their clothes," said Marshal Cohen, senior industry analyst for NPD. "The retailers made an uproar about it, and some of the manufacturers started to realize it was a great opportunity."

New York designer Nicole Miller is a perfect example. Her sizes and styles have always skewed to a smaller woman, typically a size 8 or smaller, said company President Bud Konheim.

But today those consumers can't be ignored, Konheim said, so Nicole Miller is going to start dressing them - though not in the same high-end line the company's famous for, which Konheim said has little demand at the upper end of the size spectrum. The real demand for big sizes is in middle America, he said, so a new, moderately priced line called Nicole & Co. will be "cut bigger" and go up to a size 16.

Other fashion companies are remaking themselves into plus-size businesses. The longtime moderate apparel company Charming Shoppes, which operates the primarily misses and junior-size 1,200-store Fashion Bug chain, has been rapidly turning itself into a retailer of plus-size women's apparel.

In 1999, Charming Shoppes acquired a chain of 136 plus-size stores called Modern Woman. In 2000 it acquired the Catherines Plus Sizes chain and folded Modern Woman into Catherines. Then in 2001 it bought Lane Bryant, the No. 1 plus-size brand in the country, with 700 stores.

The publishing industry is having a field day with titles devoted to exercise, weight management and cooking leaner meals. The hottest title, Rodale Press' "South Beach Diet," has sold 5 million copies since April.

Looking for a fit

And if people need to fit in it, sit in it or lie on it, someone is thinking about making it bigger. Preferred Seating of Indianapolis, a distributor and manufacturer of seating for stadiums, theaters and similar venues, has had plenty of business replacing 17- and 18-inch seats in theaters and arenas.

"People's fannies are wider than that," said Frank Sumner, president of the company. "We sell a few 19-inch seats, but we think for a while it's going to be 20s, 21s and 22s," he said.

Bariatric scales that can weigh someone over 300 pounds are also a growth business, along with other kinds of medical equipment. Last year, stretcher manufacturers Ferno-Washington Inc. and Stryker Corp. both added new models with maximum weights of 650 pounds to their product lines.

And there is Goliath Casket, which makes only oversize caskets and is adding ever-larger models.

But the airline industry is pretty much stuck with 17- and 18-inch coach seats because of the fixed width of a plane's fuselage, and that has made comfort increasingly elusive for all sizes of passengers.

Last year, Southwest Airlines announced that especially large customers would be asked to buy a second seat. Though the ticket would be refunded afterward unless the flight was completely sold out, Southwest was publicly vilified and many larger travelers were offended.

"For airlines, it's sort of a Hobson's choice: damned if you do, damned if you don't," said Doug Wills, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association. "They want to accommodate passengers that don't want to be crowded out of their seats, so it's a comfort issue. On the other hand, there are lots of large people out there ... and they don't want to alienate these folks."

American Airlines and Jet Blue have both removed some rows of seats to increase legroom, allowing them to crow about comfort.

Fat in the workplace

Superimposed on all these corporate developments is that obesity also has become a huge workplace issue.

Even as companies try to figure out how to market to larger consumers, they are seeking ways to keep their own employees from getting so fat it makes them sick. But few employers have any idea what to do; one's weight, after all, seems an eminently private issue.

But the Washington Business Group on Health, a nonprofit organization that focuses on helping corporations deal with health care issues, wants to help companies be more assertive on the issue. This summer it started an advocacy group dedicated to obesity, called the Institute on the Costs and Health Effects of Obesity. The organization was flooded with requests from companies that wanted to be on the founding board, said Helen Darling, president of the group.

Over the next two years the new panel will develop workplace strategies, communication tools and education programs to help reach corporate employees during the workday.