No Fat People Served Here

In Mississippi, a legislator has decided that people are too fat and in order to punish them, has come up with this law that will actually be voted on:

HOUSE BILL NO. 282

An act to prohibit certain food establishments from serving food to any person who is obese, based on criteria prescribed by the state department of health; to direct the department to prepare written materials that describe and explain the criteria for determining whether a person is obese and to provide those materials to the food establishments; to direct the department to monitor the food establishments for compliance with the provisions of this act; and for related purposes. Be it enacted by the legislature of the state of Mississippi:

SECTION 1.

(1) The provisions of this section shall apply to any food establishment that is required to obtain a permit from the State Department of Health under Section 41-3-15(4)(f), that operates primarily in an enclosed facility and that has five (5) or more seats for customers.

(2) Any food establishment to which this section applies shall not be allowed to serve food to any person who is obese, based on criteria prescribed by the State Department of Health after consultation with the Mississippi Council on Obesity Prevention and Management established under Section 41-101-1 or its successor. The State Department of Health shall prepare written materials that describe and explain the criteria for determining whether a person is obese, and shall provide those materials to all food establishments to which this section applies. A food establishment shall be entitled to rely on the criteria for obesity in those written materials when determining whether or not it is allowed to serve food to any person.

(3) The State Department of Health shall monitor the food establishments to which this section applies for compliance with the provisions of this section, and may revoke the permit of any food establishment that repeatedly violates the provisions of this section.


SECTION 2. This act shall take effect and be in force from and after July 1, 2008.

In the words of Dave Barry, I am not making this shit up. Read it here for yourself.

Now, as the people that are the sponsors of the bill are pale-hued white men, I have to wonder whether this is “concern” about health, or whether it is just racial/sexual discrimination in that the government, AKA the great white father, has to look out for the weak-minded fair sex and minorities, to whit:

Women of racial and ethnic minorities are affected disproportionately by obesity. Among African Americans, the proportion of women who are obese is 80 percent higher than the proportion of men who are obese(USDHHS, 2000). When compared to non-Hispanic white women, 69 percent of African American women are overweight or obese (Klauer, 2002). The prevalence of obesity increases up to age 60 after which there is a decline (Klauer, 2002).

So these legislators, safe and under guard in their ivory towers of state government, actually expect some minimum-wage worker at a restaurant to weigh patrons coming in for, say, a business lunch and then announce the people in the party that are too fat and eject them? I don’t think so.

These people are supposed to be governing for the good of the state of Mississippi. Have these people even thought of the consequences to the state of Mississippi of such a bill? Restaurants would not be able to operate and would have to close down. Do these Einsteins of health protection have any programs in place due to the economic repercussions of such a move? I really didn’t think so. Did it even occur to them that this could be considered racist/sexist in that the majority of people it would affect are minorities and/or women? Did it occur to them that this is discrimination which is, the last time I checked, illegal?