Shamed at work because of your weight?

Discrimination against overweight and obese people in the workplace is a problem around the world. — dpa

Fat people are undisciplined, lazy, stupid, low-performing and prone to illness – such is the stubborn prejudice that still exists in many human resources (HR) departments around the world.

Asked to assess people on the basis of photographs showing their face and upper torso, a group of 127 experienced HR professionals underestimated the prestige of overweight individuals’ occupations and overestimated it for normal-weight individuals in an experimental study conducted by the University of Tuebingen in Germany.