‘Cash for Chunkers’: City Pays Residents to Lose Weight

This Saturday, the city of Lynwood, California challenged its residents to shed unwanted weight by introducing its seventh annual”Cash for Chunkers” challenge. The contest provides one driven team of “chunkers” with the chance to win $3,500.

“There’s great concern among the student population about being overweight and we have to begin with the parents,” Lynwood’s Recreation and Community Services Department boss, Mark Flores told Fox News Latino. “If they get motivated to lose weight and are conscientious about it, that will help their kids.”

Program participants are reportedly required to complete a 12-week challenge that includes exercise, counting calories and attending optional motivational discussions, as well as classes on nutrition, cooking and exercise. Teams consisting of four people each compete to see which can lose the greatest amount of weight collectively, and are weighed every Saturday to document their progress.

The Public Health Department of Los Angeles Country reports that 37.8 percent of Lynwood’s population is overweight, and 27.7 percent of minors have that same problem there. Fox News Latino notes that 87 percent of Lynwood residents are Hispanic. Over 1,200 residents have reportedly participated in at least one of the city’s seven “Cash for Chunkers” challenges, and several have continued to keep up with their regimens after the program ended.

Stephen Frank of the California Political Review found it odd that the City of Lynwood, which is peppered with a “crime, drug and homeless problem has decided that the real problem is over weight citizens.”

Yesterday the California Political News and Views ran a story about Obama spending $400,000 to text fat Latino men, reminding them to exercise. Now the city of Lynnwood, in Los Angeles County near Long Beach, is using tax dollars to pay for a weight [loss] program. Obviously the taxes in this city are too high.

 

Follow Adelle Nazarian on Twitter @AdelleNaz.