In a quest to find the workers with the highest rates of obesity in the U.S., researchers at Duke University found that police officers are in first place.
The study shows that about 41 percent of cops have this problem, ahead of social workers, clergy and counselors, 35.6 percent of whom have a body mass index (BMI) of at least 30, according to UK MailOnline.
BMI serves as the standard definition of being obese, measuring relative weight based on a person's mass and height. Those with a BMI of 18.5 to 25 are considered healthy, while anything over is deemed overweight and anything under deemed underweight. Anyone with a BMI less than 15 is considered extremely underweight.
Companies have been taking different routes to get their employees into better shape, such as paying for their weight-loss surgery and offering wearable devices for tracking fitness and competitions on social apps.
Some companies even offer mental-health counseling so employees can understand the emotions that might be responsible for their poor eating habits, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Research firm Marketdata Enterprises says Americans spent $60.5 billion in 2013 on efforts aimed towards weight-loss, and that most of these efforts don't last too long. Tatiana Andreyeva, an economist at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, says if employers help obese employees get down to normal weight, or even overweight, they would save an average of 9 percent on health care and productivity losses due to employee sick time.
Additional findings include 27.7 percent of all American workers being obese and one-third of U.S. adults being obese, UK MailOnline reported. Home health aides took third place in the study with 34.8 percent, architects and engineers were fourth with 34.1 percent, and truck and bus drivers, crane operators, garbage collectors and other sedentary professions came in at fifth with 32.8 percent.
Economists, scientists and psychologists were found to be the thinnest workers with only 14.2 percent being obese. Other slim employees include actors, artists, reporters and athletes.
The study was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
