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Sweetgreen CEO Jonathan Neman sparked controversy this week after a viral post deleted from LinkedIn linked the severity of the coronavirus pandemic to high levels of obesity.
“[Seventy-eight percent] of hospitalizations due to COVID are obese and overweight people, ”Neman wrote Tuesday citing March data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “Is there an underlying issue that we may not have paid enough attention to? Is there another way to think about how we approach “healthcare” by addressing the root cause? “
Neman then pointed out that COVID-19 was an endemic virus “here to stay for the foreseeable future”.
“We cannot run away from it and no vaccine or mask will save us (by any disclosure, I am vaccinated and I help others get vaccinated),” Neman added. “Our best bet is to learn how to best live with it and to focus on overall health rather than preventing infection.”
The salad giant’s solution? Cut down on junk food.
“What if we focused on the ROOT CAUSE and used this pandemic as a catalyst to create a healthier future? Neman wrote. “What if we made the food that makes us sick illegal?” What if we taxed processed foods and refined sugar to pay for the impact of the pandemic? What if we encouraged health?
Its solutions may appear to be too far out of reach for the government, but they are no more intrusive than the vaccine mandates and draconian lockdowns that heralded society’s self-destruction with the abdication of personal responsibility, while obscuring the real pandemic. that is obesity.
“We clearly have no problem with the government’s hype about how we live our lives in the name of ‘health’,” he wrote.
Neman, however, has been ridiculed as a ‘big phobic’ and critics have scoffed at the expensive salad chain for offering Americans to deal with the underlying issues that exacerbate the severity of COVID-19.
“This post is disgusting,” replied a LinkedIn user, according to Business Insider.
“Yep, it’s incredibly big phobic,” wrote another. “Have you given any thought to how our health care system systematically underestimates people considered to be in these groups? “
I just ate a donut and challenge Jonathan Neman to death. The first person to die loses. I give it ten years in advance. https://t.co/WrF30UjqOG
– Matt Boyd (@ 3PSboyd) September 1, 2021
Vice News, one of the first publications to report the post, also mocked Neman.
“On Tuesday, the CEO of Sweetgreen, a restaurant chain that sells salads for around $ 15 a serving, said the underlying problem of the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than 600,000 Americans so far is that most of them were fat. wrote Edward Ongweso Jr.
But where is the lie? Most Americans are fat. More than 70 percent of adults 20 and older are overweight, according to the CDC. Over 42% of Americans were considered “obese” in 2017-18. Last week, a new study by researchers at the University of Michigan and the University of Southern California found that nearly half of the nation’s children aged 5 to 11 are now overweight. And yes, Americans’ excess weight has made the COVID crisis worse.
In September of last year, Science Magazine highlighted research from August that found obese patients with COVID-19 were 113% more likely to be hospitalized than patients of otherwise healthy weight. Obese patients were found to be 74% more likely to end up in intensive care units (ICUs) and 48% more likely to die.
“Since the start of the pandemic,” the magazine reported, “dozens of studies have reported that many of the sickest COVID-19 patients were obese people. “
And it’s not just the complications of COVID-19 that Americans’ excess weight has exacerbated. Obesity is also a major contributor to the leading causes of premature death, including heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and certain types of cancer.
A Harvard study published last week concluded that “removing 20% of sugar from packaged foods and 40% from drinks” could prevent 2.48 million cardiovascular diseases (such as stroke, heart attack , cardiac arrests), 490,000 cardiovascular deaths and 750,000 cases of diabetes in the United States during the lifetime of the adult population.
But is it fat-phobic to report all this? If the COVID crisis has taught us anything, it’s that an America addicted to carbs, sugar and Netflix while demanding healthy neighbors stay at home might need a little more self – saying phobia of fats.
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