Hall of Shame 1: Mississippi State Legislature

(image source:  http://janeofalltrades.verveblogs.com)

With today’s post I inaugurate what I hope will be a very infrequent series of posts recognizing people who, using their public influence, attempt to shame the obese into losing weight.  After all, if someone uses shame as a strategy, it seems only fair to reflect that shame right back on them.

Hang around the blogosphere, or look at the tens of thousands of diet books available on Amazon.com, and you will see that there’s quite a bit of disagreement on the best method of losing weight.  Low-carb, low-fat, low-calorie, carnivore, ominivore, vegetarian, vegan, medical doctor, biochemist, psychologist - everybody’s got an opinion.  And, although I find low-carb to be a godsend and a revelation, if I am to be honest, I must accept that there must be something to the other weight-loss strategies, or there wouldn’t be so many diet books claiming so many loyal followers.  There are, no doubt, a lot of ways to slim down, and different things work for different people.

But please, can’t we agree that as a society and a culture we’ve tried one thing that doesn’t work, that will never work, that does more harm than good, and on top of all that is just plain assholish?  And that thing is shaming fat people.

The shame starts from childhood, where a typical fat kid is picked on mercilessly, and it continues throughout life, as the obese are discriminated against in employment, either nagged or ignored by physicians, gawped at by strangers, and made fun of in movies.  It hasn’t made us any thinner, and furthermore, it’s mean.  Knock it the f*** off, OK?

So, in the interest of fighting fire with fire, let’s shine a little spotlight of shame on three Mississippi representatives who have introduced a bill that would forbid restaurants from serving obese would-be patrons.

The bill’s sponsors, in case you care to call them on this, are, left to right, W. T. Mayhall, Jr. (R), John Read (R), and Bobby Shows (D).  Yes, folks, it’s a bipartisan effort.

   

This bill is so ludicrous that I thought it had to be from The Onion, until I found the full text of the bill on the Mississippi Legislature’s website.

For reference, here is the full text:

House Bill 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.

———————————–

Representative Mayhall actually got two other people to co-sponsor this bill!  What the heck are these people thinking?

Don’t let that bit about July 1 worry you yet - the bill has not yet passed, much less been signed into law.  And call me a crazy optimist, but as impractical as it is, I don’t think it has a snowball’s chance in hell of passing.  Fat people may not have very much clout, but restaurant owners and business people catering to the tourist trade surely do.  And what restaurant owner in his right mind could support this?  How on earth is this going to be enforced?  What’s going to be in those “written materials” that guide the restaurant in determining?  Is it going to be an eyeball test?  Are restaurateurs going to install scales in the floor by the hostess stand?  Will a tape measure be involved?  Restaurant owners, like other business people, want to make a buck, and how to do you make a buck by not only sending away potential customers, but sending them away with a personal judgment on their weight and health habits, thereby ensuring they never return, no matter what their future weight?  What about people who have lost a significant amount of weight but are still obese, by whatever standards the regulators come up with?  How does a busy restaurant manage this judgment call during the lunch and dinner rushes?  What about people from out of town - last time I checked, obese people need to eat, too!  Won’t this drive tourism from the state?  (Heck, I’m not even obese, and I am not too inclined to visit Mississippi if this bill should pass.)  What’s next?  Penalizing grocery stores who sell junk food to the obese?

So obviously impractical is this bill, it can only be a publicity stunt intended to, you guessed it, lay another layer of shame on fat people.  And in fact, one of the bill’s sponsors, Representative Mayhall, said that he has little hope the bill will pass, and that it was designed to “call attention to the serious problem of obesity and what it is costing the Medicare system.”  Yes, ’cause we sure don’t hear enough about the serious problem of obesity!  You hardly ever hear anyone talking about what an overload (ouch, pardon the pun) obesity causes on the health care system.  I sure as heck didn’t know that everything from diabetes to heel fissures to toenail fungus is traceable to excess body fat!  I’ve never seen it in the media, my doctor has never mentioned it, and no well-meaning friend or relative has ever mentioned that if I’d just lose weight, all my problems would disappear.  And I bet you didn’t know, either.  I’m sure glad Representative Mayhall and his cabal are getting the word out.

No, folks, this is shame, pure and simple.  This is a simple-minded attempt to shame people into losing weight.  As frequent readers of this blog know, I think it is counterproductive to treat obesity as if it were the result of the twin sins of sloth and gluttony.  Readers of Good Calories, Bad Calories are aware that this mixes up cause and effect.  Overeating and lack of exercise do not cause obesity; rather, obesity causes hunger and fatigue, leading to overeating and lack of exercise.  So aside from being insulting, shame is useless.  You’re never going to embarrass someone out of being tired and hungry, any more than you can embarrass them out of cancer or the common cold.  If legislatures are really serious about addressing the problem of obesity, they have to first learn what constitutes an effective treatment of obesity.

The Migraineur is a flawed human being, and one thing I struggle with is a tendency to say unkind things about my enemies.  But friends, I am not even trying to restrain myself today - this is tit for tat.  If three boneheaded legislators in Mississippi want to deny fat people the right to make their own food choices, the right to spend their money as they see fit, and in the process to deny restaurant owners the ability to serve anyone who has the ability to pay, out of some misguided sense that shame will fix the obesity epidemic - well, all I can say is, Representative Read doesn’t look as though he’s winning the Battle of the Bulge himself.  Let’s see that picture again, at a higher resolution this time:

If you were a Mississippi restaurant owner faced with losing your license if you served an obese person, would you take a chance on serving Representative Read?  Maybe Read should take the log out of his own eye before worrying about the speck in his neighbor’s?  Just sayin’ …

Anyway, doesn’t Mississippi have worse problems to deal with, like the sorry state of its educational system, which routinely ranks at or near the bottom of rankings of all 50 states?  Or maybe that educational system is responsible for voters putting guys like this in the legislature in the first place?