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The 'calorie tax'
Baker soon found out that employees were not the only resisters."The vending machine people were not very supportive," she says. At first, she says, they grudgingly tossed in some trail mix and stuck a little heart sticker next to those fluorescent orange crackers with peanut butter.
But within weeks, the potato chips and candy bars were back. Junk moves.
That's why some companies are getting to employees' stomachs through their wallets. After Caterpillar offered garden burgers in its cafeteria for a buck last year, sales soared fivefold, to 2,500 a month. At mortgage giant Freddie Mac, workers who order six healthful meals in the cafeteria get the seventh free.
Florida Power & Light, Dow Corning and Sprint Nextel all charge more for unhealthful food (the so-called calorie tax) and less for more healthful fare. At Pitney Bowes, they moved the desserts away from the cash register to curb impulse buys.
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Some companies feel like a re-education camp. Microsoft's food honcho, Mark Freeman, created a color-coded system of icons to help make the healthful stuff as recognizable as a Snickers bar. (Microsoft is the publisher of MSN Money).
In each of Microsoft's 31 cafeterias, there are icons for vegan, gluten-free, organic, sustainable, sugar-free, carb control and nondairy. Freeman has also made the company's metropolislike headquarters a trans-fat-free zone.
At first, "everybody was yelling and screaming about the healthy food," Freeman says. But the Microserfs are coming around.
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For those who don't, there is always tough love. HR types swarmed the New York Marriott Marquis hotel in February to learn how to implement lean-worker campaigns, biggest-loser contests and strategic-eating seminars. During breaks over yogurt and fruit, the attendees swapped war stories about how overweight workers eat up health-care dollars.
As one executive from a major software company quipped: "We're waging a war on fat people."
Junk food lovers, beware. These people are serious.
This article was reported and written by Michelle Conlin for BusinessWeek.
Published May 8, 2008
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