State Rep. John Read (repub.), one of the bill's three authors, says he wasn't trying to offend anybody. "I was trying to shed a little light on the No. 1 problem in
Steve Holland, the Democratic chairman of the House Public Health and Human Services Committee, saidhe will "pocket veto" the bill. "It's dead on arrival at my desk."
Although he appreciates the "efforts of my fellow House members to help curb the obesity problem in
About one-third of Americans are obese (30 or more pounds over a healthy weight), and 66% are overweight or obese. Even so, obesity experts are outraged by the bill.
"And what about civil rights? It's totally unenforceable, and you'd be alienating people. Most people who are obese don't want to be that way."
J. Justin Wilson of the Center for Consumer Freedom, a group financed by the restaurant and food industry, said in a statement: "This is the latest example of food cops run amok. Are waiters supposed to carry scales around the restaurant and weigh every customer? Give me a break. What's next? Will waitresses soon be expected to make sure we eat all our veggies?"
Do you think this bill is ridiculous as well?
Do you believe that obesity can be considered a civil rights issue?
9 comments:
I think this bill is completely rediculous and discriminatory. I understand that the state wants to decrease the number of obese people because it is definately an embarrassment to be the state with the highest level of obesity. However, as Holland said, this is not necessarily the right approach to decreasing obesity.
The state needs to find ways to create certain health standards at restaurants or something similar to end the obesity epidemic that is less discriminatory and will cause less legal problems in the future.
Obviously this issue needs to be dealt with, however, by discriminating this subjected group of people, the state will just be causing more problems for this group in the future.
The 14th Amendment guarantees "equal protection" under the Constitution. Even though it doesn't explicitly say that physical appearance and weight can not be discriminated against, its pretty obvious that it is implied. If the obese folk of Mississippi banded together and took the legislation to court, its likely that the court would rule the legislation as unconstitutional because it discriminated against a certain group of people. Even though there could be some governmental interest in trying to keep people healthy, I don't think that outweighs the rights of the obese. So if the legislation is indeed passed, then it would probably be taken to court and ruled unconstitutional there.
Wouldnt that be discrimination to a group of people. Cant they just have the restraunts serve healthier food. Maybe they could promote healthy eating ways to kids and to work out more. That might be a better way to deal with it then just banning obese people from restraunts.
I agree with Emma that this bill would be completely discriminatory--not to mention also extremely embarrassing for the obese people who get turned away from restaurants! Discriminating against obese people isn't the right way to solve the obesity problem. Some people may say encouraging a healthier lifestyle and eating habits would help, but I think that's not enough. Most obese people already know their lifestyle isn't that healthy yet they continue to live and eat the same way anyway. What Mississippi should do is make a bill that regulates the nutrition content of what restaurants serve. For example, entrees cant have over X amount of fat and portions can't exceed a certain amount. It would also be beneficial to include nutritional values in menus because it will make people more aware of what they're eating, and maybe if they see that slice of pie has 200 calories from fat, they'll think twice about eating it.
This is hilarious. How does legislation like this get all the way to the chair? Obviously it's discriminatory.. it reminds me of when people who are overweight are turned down from roller coasters.
In reality though, there's a significant number of overweight people who starve themselves to try and cut down.. but it just eats away at other things besides fat so they're really unhealthy.
Hm. If this went through then other states should force feed superskinny supermodels..
my mother is not necessarily overweight but also not completely fit and was deeply offended by this. also, what if a person was just pregnant??? how embarrassing for the restaurant...were do they have the right to say who's obese or not? no question about it, this proposition was stupid ad offense and discriminatory.
We can also argue that this kind of legislation probably wouldn't work anyway. It's not like obese people will lose weight just because they're not getting food from a certain restaurant. However, i'm not sure we can regulate what restaurants serve either. Wouldn't that infringe on their rights to serve whatever they want?
Some people like being fat. This bill is ridiculous.
Also, it'd be hard to define exactly what would constitute obesity without making everyone who enters the restaurant measure their height and weight.
I agree that this is not the answer to the obesity problem. Ultimately, the solution must come from people choosing to eat more healthily and exercising, or making food more healthy (companies and restaurants probably won't go out of their way to make food more healthy, so the burden is on the people to be healthy.)
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