This article from Junkfood Science is just shocking. If you needed any evidence that fat prejudice was a dangerous thing, there you go. Never mind that the bill won't pass because the restaurant lobby in Mississippi is too powerful, the fact that someone sat down in a room and wrote this bill out, proofread it, revised it, discussed it in a committee, and submitted it for actual consideration is just unbelievable to me. As a commenter on BigFatBlog noted, this kind of thing just serves as the distraction for the real legislation. So the next bill that's introduced that's slightly less extreme will be taken more seriously because at least it's not as crazy as Mississippi! The whole thing is a slippery slope and a very distressing precedent.
Even if you buy into the whole idea that fat people would just not be fat if they ate differently (which I don't, btw), is it really the kind of thing that the government should be involved in? Should politicians have the right to decide whether someone can go out to dinner with their families based on how fat they are? It blows my mind that anyone can look at that and think it's a good idea. What a fucked up world.
30 comments:
Obese people still need to eat!! It would be a better idea for restaurants to offer healthy food and serving sizes that people would normally eat - not these massive portions they generally provide. Some obese people do eat too much; some may have a metabolic condition. That should not be ours to judge. Anyhow, no restaurant would ever be for a bill like this as they'd lose too many customers!!
Well, not to open a can of worms, but some skinny people eat too much too. And frankly, who is anybody to decide how much is 'too much' for another person? Whether a person is fat because they have an eating disorder or a metabolic disorder or their body is just built that way, they still deserve to be treated like any other person and not singled out or excluded because they look different.
i'd get irate about it all but... it would only make me want to eat
what is the point of this legislation? to come to the aid of the obese by not allowing them to eat in a restaurant? or merely to prevent the un-obese to not have to gaze upon the obese? I haven't read the bill but I presume that it is couched in terms of the obese person's health. it is quite orwellian.
mom hits on a key point though: the modern american restaurant, at least those found in your average strip mall, is a contributer, a promotor of obesity w/ portion size. look at your claim jumpers, chilis, fridays, whatever. all bad for you, served dripping in grease and fat and served in enormo-portions. I was about to say they should just legislate that but they actually have (the transfat in nyc)...
I can see both sides to the issue. On one hand people should be able to eat what they want and be themselves. On the other hand though, the obesity causes many health problems and thus drives the cost of health care through the roof for everyone. I believe something needs to be done to cut the obesity problem off at the pass, but I am not sure this is the correct method.
The thing is, there hasn't been any conclusive proof that obesity is the cause of any health problems or that health care costs for obese people are higher. If you really look at the studies out there with a critical eye, you will see that what is reported on the news is not exactly true.
But let's set aside all of that. Say you continue to believe that fat people cost all of us more. I don't particularly agree that obesity is a disease, but I know alcoholism is. And alcoholics generally have more health problems than non-alcoholics. But should a person be required to prove to a bartender that he/she is not an alcoholic before he/she can be served any beverage in a bar? Even if the person is just drinking club soda, remember the bill doesn't say that fat people are only allowed to eat "healthy" foods in public, it says that you're not allowed to serve them at all. So we're talking about banning an entire segment of the population (which, by the way, is more than half of everybody) from walking into a restaurant and being served. We're talking about having a scale at the door and having people turned away from the restaurant if their BMI is too high. It's ludicrous. And bullshit.
indeed
When it comes down to it obesity does cause health problems regardless of what you say. Diabetes, heart disease, increased risk of hearth attack and stroke, and many more have been proven to be side effects of bad eating and obesity. Here you go, here are some figures that dispute the website you say proves there are no side effects of obesity.
http://www.thehealthcareblog.com/the_health_care_blog/2007/10/what-obesity-re.html
Anyway, if you had read what I originally posted I stated at the end of it that I didn't believe barring people from eating establishments was the proper way to go about things. But thanks for the rant anyway.
This article is actually perfect for proving my point, because if you really read what it is saying and the studies it refers to, there is no actual proof of any correlation or causation between obesity and the diseases mentioned. The author mentions two studies, one that says that Americans have higher levels of chronic diseases than Europeans and one that calculates how much certain chronic diseases cost Americans to treat, and the only mention of obesity is in two opinions on the results of the first study and the author's own opinion. You and I both know that opinions aren't evidence.
Yeah, I got a little ranty in my last comment, but I would imagine that if a legislator decided to pick a physical characteristic that defined you, maybe your particular hair color, height, eye color or (dare I say it?) skin color and proposed that we use that characteristic to exclude people like you from eating in restaurants, it would probably make you a little irate as well. I'm not ranting because I'm trying to be unreasonable, I'm ranting because the bill is unreasonable and scary and deserves to be challenged vigorously.
yeah, have to agree w/ anonymous: i'm against the nazi legislation but i don't think it's a crazy statement to say obesity can engender health concerns. i think it's verifiable, not some shadowy conspiracy. people can be assholes about it though. i grant you that
It's not really about it being a shadowy conspiracy. The fact is, there is a lot of money to be made in the diet industry and the pharmaceutical industry by keeping people on the weight loss bandwagon. Why is it so much easier to believe that the media can be shaped to fit certain agendas about war or politics than it is to believe that a multibillion dollar industry might have a hand in controlling the 'fat is unhealthy' message? And I'm not talking about under-the-table payoffs in dark alleys with shifty guys in trench coats. I'm just talking about how the majority of obesity studies are funded by pharmaceutical and diet companies that have a major financial interest in how the results are reported, and the majority of articles on the 'obesity crisis' can be traced back to press releases from financially-interested companies or "research groups".
Anyway, Kate Harding already made a lot of these points for me in her posting "Don't You Realize Fat Is Unhealthy?" on Shapely Prose.
ah, i kind of see what you mean now. yes, there is certainly a sort of false body image worship. It's everywhere in mass-media and certainly - in a free-market system - any company that sees a profit motive in anything will pursue that thing. The Media (book/movie/whatever) inserts or promotes a body-image goal in your head that makes you feel deficient or wrong if you don't posess that body. Pharmaceutical company X or WeightLoss system Y steps in and offers the key to your dreams, etc etc.
yes, I grant you that some of those profit driven ideas and companies are specious and false and more about the bottom line of their company etc etc.
but i don't think you can argue that modern medicine is lying or deluded if they find health concerns arising from obesity per se.
bottom line is: don't listen to that mass-media white noise BS about who you should be (ie what you should buy/consume) but that doesn't mean that pursuing health is bad for you or evil just because it appears to run parallel w/ what the mass-media is trumpeting
i tried twice to put in a link but it kept cutting it off. anyway, by coincidence i found this story on CNN. com about Phil Novak. you can google it
I heartily agree that the pursuit of health is a good thing. :)
sure did make people think.
I find it hard to believe that all the Doctors, Physicians, Scientists, etc are together in one giant conspiracy to lie to the world about health issues involved with being obese. That is a lot like saying "smoking isn't bad for you, I don't care what anyone says". It just doesn't make sense...
No one is saying it's a giant conspiracy. All I'm saying is that you can't blindly believe everything you are told about obesity because there are very clear financial interests involved that could easily influence the information that gets to the public. And doctors are members of the public so they are influenced by the way obesity is reported, just like you and I are.
just like dr. spaceman on 30 Rock. malleable and easily bought.
Of course the Doctors are influenced by lies. They don't go to years and years of school, spend tons of time studying health, read medical journals, or anything that might constitute them knowing something. They just watch infomercials and E! to get their information. You can make excuses all day on why you won't "bow" to anyone and better your health. Unfortunately it is quite obvious from your blogs that you know better and want to change, but every time you have a little set back you find excuses (i.e. obesity vs health is all a lie) to make yourself feel better about failing. Maybe it is time to stop making excuses and do what is necessary to make yourself happier.
Well you clearly feel very strongly about my health and happiness, and I appreciate that. I can't deny that I do have difficulty making changes in my life, and sometimes it doesn't take much to derail those efforts, but I'm only human and that's how humans are sometimes. I don't agree that looking critically at the way obesity studies are presented in the media is tantamount to making excuses. I think it's important for everyone to question the information that is handed to them, especially if they plan to use that information to make decisions about their health. No, I don't believe that doctors are just a bunch of nitwits who take all of their cues from the media, but the fact is, there are very few absolutes when it comes to science and medicine. Things that were steadfastly believed to be true for many many years have been disproven with recent studies. First we're told fat people are all going to have heart attacks and die, then a study comes out that proves that fat people have a lower risk of cardiac death than their thin counterparts. We're told that fat kills but then another study comes out that shows that fat can actually provide some health benefits.
The bottom line for me is that there is no conclusive proof that being thin equals being healthy and even if there were, there is no proof that if a fat person were to lose enough weight to become thin, that he/she would then be healthy. And even if there were, nobody has ever been able to come up with a reliable way of losing weight and keeping it off. So if I'm fat now, which I obviously am, where does that leave me? To spend a life of yo-yo dieting (which btw has been proven to have many unhealthy side-effects) and dissatisfaction with myself in a likely-to-fail effort to change the number on the scale? Or would it be more healthy to instead embrace the body I have and try to integrate more activity and healthier eating habits into my life? I have tried both approaches, and I promise you that the life I have now that I have given up the weight loss roller coaster is infinitely happier than the life I had while I was on it.
would you agree that cigarette smoking is harmful to your health? Even though there are 'conflicting' reports from phillip morris and co? i quit smoking 5 yrs ago and i am all the better for it.
i agree w/ you that there are unverifiable things out there in the universe, that even science and medicine cannot fully explain -reiki, deja vu, the human back - but i disagree with your phrase "there are very few absolutes in science and medicine". as the previous poster implied, it's not like there's a bunch of lunatics out there running around willy-nilly saying crazy lopsided things about medicine and calling themselves doctors just for the hell of it. there's a lot of scholarship and study involved. i was at the mercy of doctors (and science) a few years ago and without them, who knows, i might be dead.
i don't think anyone is saying
"be thin and be happy" at least not overtly. happiness is dependent on all sorts of personal factors. i think more what's being said is 'obesity is not healthy'. that's different from saying 'being thin is healthy'.
that would be like saying "quitting cigarettes means that you're healthy" which it doesn't. "cigarettes are unhealthy" is a true statement.
much love,
xo
Yes, I would agree that cigarette smoking is hazardous to your health, just as I would agree that a sedentary lifestyle or a diet high in fat and cholesterol is (according to current available information) potentially hazardous to your health.
I stand by my statement that there are few absolutes in science and medicine, and I don't believe I remotely implied that doctors are a bunch of idiots who don't know what they're talking about. The fact is, medical research is always producing new data so it's hard to know what information to trust. There is a lot of evidence on both sides of the fat/health debate and I would encourage anyone who is 100% convinced one way or another to take a closer look at the research. The question of fat and health just hasn't been conclusively answered yet.
I believe it has been answered. I don't think you can find a single doctor who claims that obesity is good for you. That's not really a great raging debate in modern medicine.
Heroin, is it actually good for you? Cigarettes, can addiction actually save your lungs? Obesity, can it in fact improve your life?
you 2 need to duke it out lol
As I said, I would encourage you or anyone else who is convinced one way or another to do some actual research instead of just assuming that what you've heard is true.
dear me. you're starting to sound like one of those right-wing idealogues who argue vociferously that global warming isn't real. It is.
my hope is that one day - maybe the day we're running a marathon together through europe or hiking up half-dome - you'll look back at your absolute stubbornness on this issue and laugh.
until then I'll be right here waiting --
much love to you
xo
"Embrace the body I have and try to integrate more activity and healthier eating habits into my life" - sounds like a good idea to me! Scientific information and views do change. In the early 1900's, heroin was used for children's cough medicine!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin. And over the years we have been told conflicting things: "Don't eat eggs as they are bad for you." A few years later, "Eat eggs, nature's perfect food." "Margarine is healthier than butter"; no "butter is healthier" etc. Read the studies, listen to the health profession but also use your own common sense. No matter what studies say, healthier eating habits and more activity sound like a good choice for an individual. As for all the rest, they'll still be arguing it long after we are all dead and gone.
amen
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