Overweight urged to drop pounds, help feed the hungry

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Want to drop those excess pounds and help a worthy cause? Now, losing weight can improve someone else's life as well as your own.

Weight Watchers is kicking off a program that it hopes will not only inspire Americans to lose weight, but to help those at home and abroad who are suffering from hunger and malnutrition.

The company said it will donate the cost of a pound (0.45 kilos) of food aid for every pound its members shed for a six-week period beginning September 7, up to $1 million, to the charities Share Our Strength and Action Against Hunger.

"I love the fact that we will able to contribute up to $1 million" to these groups, said David Kirchhoff, president and CEO of Weight Watchers International.

"But if we can inspire in our own little way this grass-roots movement of doing local food drives all across the country, maybe that is the example we can help set and others will join us."

Kirchhoff got the inspiration for the program when he visited a local chapter of Weight Watchers in Seattle last year. The coordinator at the chapter encouraged clients to save a pound of food at home for every pound they lost.

The Seattle group donated over 2,000 pounds of food to local food banks.

There are 1.6 billion overweight people in the world and 862 million who are underfed, according to the World Health Organization.

Kirchhoff said the company will also encourage its local chapters to donate non-perishable foods to local food banks and pantries where the need is great.

During a recent visit to a distribution center of the Food Bank for New York City, which helps an estimated 1.3 million people annually, Kirchhoff said they only had three million pounds of food on hand but the center had the capacity to hold 10 million pounds of food.

He added that rising food and energy prices are forcing more working families to turn to food banks for help.