Eaton-Kenway: a sane way to eat and live.

• Author: Thueson, Raylene
• Position: Utah materials-management corporation develops health-awareness programs for employees

Eaton-Kenway A Sane Way to Eat and Live

The U.S. Health Care Financing Administration projects America's health-care costs per person will more than double in the 1990s. The average person paid $1,973 in 1987, $2,511 in 1990, and will pay a projected $5,551 in the year 2000.

Businesses bear a larger share of this financial burden each year. Research reveals that health-care costs are 2.5 times the Consumer Price Index, and the expenses paid by business and industry are increasing at twice this inflated rate.

According to the Association for Fitness in Business, the rate of inflation is 3.2 percent. Health-care costs, however, are rising 8.7 percent each year. Health-care costs paid by businesses, meanwhile, are escalating at an alarming 16 to 20 percent each year.

Most of these health-care dollars are spent on treatment of preventable diseases caused largely by the American worker's life-style - sedentary, nutritionally poor, and stressful. Consequently, most companies have instituted cost-containment policies to minimize misuse of the health-care system. Further, many companies are now implementing sound health and fitness programs to help prevent the illnesses which cause these costs to soar.

A Utah Company Takes Control

"Good Health is often a matter of time. It is sometimes also a matter of opportunity," wrote Hippocrates.

He was right. The most important influence on an individual's good health is not disease or heredity - though they play a large part - but lifestyle. Because our lifestyles are within our control, so is our health. We have to take the opportunity to improve it.

Eaton-Kenway is a Utah corporation providing the opportunity for its employees to take control and improve their personal health. The company's human resources department has developed a health-awareness program that reaches out to every employee with seminars and printed health-education information.

Eaton-Kenway is the leading materials-management corporation in the world. Kenway conceptualizes, designs, and installs automated material-handling systems for companies large and small. These sophisticated systems solve distribution, processing, storage, and routing problems. The company employs more than 400 people at its plants in Salt Lake and Bountiful.

Big Benefits for Little or No Cost

When developing the health-awareness programs for the employees, the human resources people decided they needed to help employees understand the personal benefits of...