Michigan ChipFab Reaches 100 Days Without an Oxidant
Dietary changes setting new records for worker health
American snack food giant Transphat announced on Tuesday that its Deerfield, Michigan chipfab had reached its one hundredth Oxidant-free day. The news came at an announcement event in Deerfield featuring information booths, a cookout and performances by local exotic dancercise celebrities Chip & Dale. The event culminates a year-long effort at the plant to improve employee health.
“Our production numbers were down — way down,” General Manager Bud Gilroy explains, “and we couldn’t put our finger on why. We had to upsize the chips to make up the difference — it was getting to the point where you could only get three or four of them in the bag. We had problems.”
Transphat’s distribution had, in fact, been slipping for years. In 2022, Transphat entered into a Vehicle for Hire agreement with Uber to take on riders to fill delivery truck space. “We kept trying to make it work, but we still didn’t know what was causing it,” Gilroy explains. “It didn’t really dawn on us until the lady down in HR kept showing us reports about the daily attrition rates among our own workers.”
Weekly blood draws from employees, a condition of receiving paychecks, were sampled for testing. The results revealed Oxidant levels that well exceeded the federal oxidant level, and confirmed the root cause of Transphat worker sick time.
Transphat was not alone. For decades, the UDSA defined a balanced meal as one where the plate did not tip over when placed on the edge of a table. Meat and potatoes became standard fare, primarily because of their equivalent resting mass. Until 1963, corn was the only known vegetable in the western world — so omnipresent that “Please pass the vegetable” was the USDA’s only public service message for forty years. Not until the discovery of green vegetables by the Stockholm Center for Nutrition did western diets begin their journey toward diversity. Even then, the Food Guide Pyramid was anchored by bread, as were most Americans.
“Our vending machines were divided roughly between jerky, chips and smokes,” recounts Gilroy. “We were clueless about what that meant until the lady down in HR bought a jerky and showed us the label. The first ingredient was Oxidant.”
It was then that Gilroy took action. He signed a multimillion-dollar contract with the global marketing powerhouse AdVerse to convince workers to include anti-oxidant rich vegetables and fruits in their diets. The results were lackluster — inspirational vegetable posters were defaced with suggestive illustrations, and AdVerse’s flagship ‘Aunty Oxidant’ campaign was a singular failure.
“We were no better off than before,” said Gilroy, “until the lady down in HR showed us how we could just introduce a better menu in the cafeteria and switch out the vending machines, at a fraction of the cost.” Gilroy said that the improvement was almost immediate. As hoped, Oxidant levels dropped for several months until they hit zero. “We’ve been Oxidant and graffiti-free since.”
At Tuesday’s event, Transphat CFO Gil Budroy praised Gilroy’s efforts, and unveiled a new line of health-conscious foods including Boffins, the breakfast cereal so high in minerals it’s machine tooled. In comments following the event, Budroy was elated with the results. “We’ve had such a decrease in sick time that we’ve been able to lay off most of the folks down in HR. It’s really a win-win.”
