Fat computer workers to get treadmills

BOFFINS have developed a stand-up work cubical which will allow workers to use a computer while operating a treadmill.

The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, has designed the standup "walk-and-work" desk, to help lardy workers shed pounds as they perform what are traditionally sit-down tasks.

It suggests that along with obesity, the sedentary nature of work is increasing because of the common use of desktop computers and by 2010, more than half of the workforce from developed countries will be working at computers.

The boffins had 15 obese volunteers use the treadmill-cum-desk and measured how many calories they burned compared to sitting at a conventional desk.

They burned an average of 191 kilocalories an hour while at the vertical workstation, walking the equivalent of 1.6 kilometres an hour, compared to 72 kilocalories per hour while working sitting down. The vertical workstation will cost $1,600 US and will be on the shelves soon.

Of course they are missing the chance of wiring the treadmill into the power grid and cutting the cost of electricity, thus saving the planet from green house gases.

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Treadmills came into English jails as a result of the 1779 prison reform act. The big idea was that prisoners should be given hard labour in "which drudgery is chiefly required and where the work is little liable to be spoiled by ignorance, neglect, or obstinacy." Oscar Wilde was one of the more famous people who had to work one. They were later banned by the Victorians as a waste of effort as a lump of coal could do the same thing that five prisoners could do on a treadmill and the Victorians hated waste.