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Sabourin has set up shop at a profitable crossroads. Today 65% of U.S. adults are classified as overweight, up from 46% two decades ago. And nearly a third of adults are considered obese (say, 190 lbs. or more for someone 5 ft. 6 in.), up from 14% in 1980. Any way you look at it, heavy Americans represent a fast-growing market with special needs. Until recently the business world's primary response was to pitch diets, workouts and potions to those determined to melt off the pounds. The weight-loss market grew to about $40 billion last year, from...
Medical-equipment manufacturers such as Hill-Rom of Batesville, Ind., and Kinetic Concepts of San Antonio, Texas, rent and sell everything from heavy-duty commodes and wheelchairs to mechanized beds that can hold 500 lbs. to 1,000 lbs., help turn patients and feature air-circulation mattress systems to help prevent bedsores. The market for bed surfaces and accessories alone is estimated to be $150 million a year and is growing 15% annually. "As the obesity epidemic grows, so does our revenue," says Lynne Sly, vice president of marketing at Kinetic Concepts. Rental rates are steep...
...Indiana Jones, that might prove dangerous to them. The company also stocks scooters and wide electric wheelchairs. "Disney World may not be perfect, but it's as close to heaven as a fat person can get," says Wanda Sykes, 33, a health-care administrator from Atlanta who weighs 285 lbs. "I visited the old Spanish fort in St. Augustine and got stuck in this dungeon room. It was horrible...
...birds are Magellanic penguins, which weigh about 7 lbs., stand about 18 in. and reach a top swimming speed of 15 m.p.h. In the wild, they would make migrations of 2,000 miles along the coast of South America. That equals 26,400 laps around the zoo's pool, and the birds appear to be trying to swim every one of them...
...sedentary, overweight women ages 50 to 75 and put half of them on a five-day-a-week exercise plan, which included such activities as walking, biking and aerobics for about 45 minutes a day. At the end of a year, the women had lost weight--a modest 3 lbs. on average--but, more important, C.T. scans showed they had lost up to 6.9% of the fat in their middles. Nonexercisers, by comparison, neither lost weight nor reduced intra-abdominal...