Donate Your Calories

How many starving children could you save by losing a few pounds yourself?

"More than you might guess," says Terry Dunkle, CEO of Diet Power, Inc. His company has launched a new website, www.DonateYourCalories.com, that calculates dollars you'll save and children you can feed with the calories given up during a weight loss diet.

Tell this new online computer that you're a 37-year-old, 150-pound woman on a moderate food budget who wants to slim down to 130 by next July 4, for example. Seconds later, it replies that your diet will reduce your grocery bill by $31 a month. Donated to a typical hunger charity using volunteers and surplus food, that's enough to feed two children full-time.

"'Donate Your Calories' is our way of helping to erase one of today's greatest ironies," Dunkle says. "While millions go to bed hungry every night, the rest of us are becoming too fat for our own good."

Overweight, obesity and inactivity have doubled over the past 30 years, and now rank as one of America's top 10 killers. The Centers for Disease Control estimate deaths at 112,000 a year, mostly from heart disease, cancer, diabetes and stroke. That's four times the number killed in auto accidents.

Meanwhile, the Rand Corporation has pegged the annual medical and social costs of overweight and obesity at a whopping $950 per U.S. household.

"Donating your calories is a quadruple-win proposition," Dunkle says. "How else can you improve your health, save hungry children, cut your insurance premiums and build international goodwill without spending an extra dime? Remember, this is money you're already wasting on overeating."

Dunkle is inviting hunger charities to link to www.DonateYourCalories.com, which Diet Power is operating as a public service. He is also contributing savings from his own weight loss diet to charity.