Noxibox, all Vitality is, is a way to gather very accurate data on your clients. That is their greatest ROI for the whole exercise which allows them to better model life expectancy and thereby, profiitibility.
Of course much of it is a way to gather information. But since they don't actually regulate the exercise part, they have no way of knowing whether someone is doing exercise in a more or less damaging way. It is not simply a matter of exercise is good. That's 80s thinking. We now know it was wrong. Badly wrong. And their continuing obsession with fat as bad, amongst other dietary rubbish they continue to promote, means any forecasting they're doing is basically worthless.
I.e. you will have to go the extra mile which encourages positive health behaviour.
Yeah, it doesn't unfortunately.
By carrying over point you do great for a few years and then just chillax and let the carry over get you to Gold.
To do that you'd need to have 180,000 points per person in one year. And if you don't get back up to 180,000 the next year you'll still have to go back to earning points somehow.
Professional athletes and gym fanatics will likely get damaged long term but amateurs likely will not unless they do it in a retarded way and then that is their own fault.
On the contrary amateurs can be expected to be more likely to hurt themselves. They're also less likely to get appropriate treatment. One reason will be the immediate cost to themselves. Discovery of course will refuse to pay for it if the person is on a hospital plan, but will eventually pay out even more if that person decides to take it to hospital. By that point an injury that might have cost a few thousand Rand to treat immediately will cost tens of thousands to repair.
On the food you are spot on but please keep in mind that the Vitality recommendations are infinately better than the person who is chowing KFC and McD's all the time.
Someone who wanted to game the system could simply buy cheap 'healthy' food and not eat it. I voted against their negative point system and I'll use some measure to counter it. Plus it can't really be better to be eating brown sugar rather than compressed dried fruit, but the former earned healthy food credit, while the latter didn't. If there's one case of such silliness, then there are bound to be many more.
The low salt focus is a simple consequence of SA having a very high level of heart disease (i.e. read biggest cost for Discovery).
Pity that recent research shows that low salt diets very likely increase your risk of having a heart attack.
Everyone knows that BMI sucks. Its sucks big time. But can you please suggest other health/fitness measurements that can be feasibly implemented in a cost effective way? I think BMI is the best you have as a general and averaged guide. If your doctor starts talking about BMI only then do you need to get worried.
I don't care about BMI one way or the other. It's simply not a health indicator, and thus my point stands.
They can't be wrong about all these things and really be promoting health. How can they promote something when they quite clearly have no idea what it is?
