All Posts Tagged With: "obesity"

The Smoking Gun is reporting that three Mississippi legislators have introduced legislation “that would make it illegal for state-licensed restaurants to serve obese patrons.” You can read the actual bill here. The report does mention that the bill is likely “dead on arrival,” but it’s the thought that counts!

Aside from hurting my feelings and prompting me to detour around that intolerant state, it begs the question, where are overweight travelers driving through the state supposed to eat? It also makes you wonder if the restaurant industry in the state is as enthusiastic about this bill as these misguided fools politicians. Not only will they lose their most profitable customers, won’t it expose their industry as being complicit in the obesity epidemic?

This doesn’t seem to be the most effective way to get people to lose weight. At least our mayor addressed our own city’s weight problem in a positive way, with a voluntary challenge to collectively lose a million pounds, rather than this police-state solution. Well, I’ll honor their intentions. This obese traveler won’t patronize any Mississippi eating establishments; in fact, I’ll just avoid the whole damn state! I wonder what this will do to the tourism in Mississippi if by some bizarre lunacy this bill were to become law.

I honestly can’t imagine that this would ever pass. And if it did, I can’t fathom that it would pass muster in the judicial process.

If nothing else, it’s more evidence (as if we needed any more such evidence) that our elected “leaders” are more consumed with the less significant, peripheral issues at the peril of the more urgent, central issues that need addressing — growing poverty, children and families without healthcare, crumbling infrastructure, faltering education, etc., etc., etc.