Increases in the size and weight of Dutch people are forcing the country’s funeral industry to introduce bigger coffins, more pallbearers, wider crematoria ovens and longer cremation times.
A study by the NRC Handelsblad newspaper has found that the Dutch funeral is changing as people in the Netherlands get fatter.
Official health statistics show that half of Dutch people are overweight, with 35 per cent moderately chubby and about 15 per cent classed as obese.
In recent years most coffin makers have increased the size of caskets to, as one manufacturer put it, match “the average stature of the contemporary Dutchman”.
Van Wijk funeral caskets, in the undertaking business since 1925, have added an inch to the width of their coffins “due to increasing demand”.
The bigger coffins and larger corpses inside are increasing the weight with implications for funeral corteges with the number of pallbearers rising from the traditional six to eight more frequently.
Extra pallbearers means extra costs, usually €100 per funeral, which are not covered by most death insurance schemes.
One guild of pallbearers, Altena from Andel, Brabant, now asks funeral directors about the weight of full coffins after regular problems.
As well as rising demand for wider cremation ovens, overweight or obese people take longer to cremate. “We generally count 15 minutes longer,” said a spokesman for the Dela funeral company, which manages 22 crematoria across the Netherlands.
Obese Dutch people, scared by the higher risks posed to them by Covid-19, have increasingly undertaken gastric bypass surgery since the height of the pandemic.
The number of people requesting the surgery has increased from 7,000 to 8,050 since September 2020, De Telegraaf newspaper reported.
“Coronavirus is not the only motivation for people to undergo gastric reduction surgery, but I see that it is the last push for patients who have been struggling with their weight and annoying health ailments for a long time,” Sjoerd Bruin, a surgeon at the Hoofddorp hospital, said.
THE TIMES – 05/10/21