New bill would make it illegal for restaurants to serve the obese

reply to post by biggie smalls


You bring up good points. I agree that there are indeed psychological aspects as well, but even those are intimately tied to the deteriorating structure of the family unit and our society as a whole.

reply to post by jackinthebox


i never understood this whole "they eat fast food cos it's cheap" stuff.
I have 4 children, don't earn much, single parent (divorced) and trust me, they have fast food as a treat, maybe once every couple of months. Nor do i serve it in my house. Cheap food can easily be nutritional. Lentils, rice, vegetable curries, etc....the list goes on. Last week, i spent about £9 for the five of us...made tandoori chicken, rice, salad, and there was still enough for me to nibble on the next day.

It is laziness, pure and simple.

As for this new bill....i can't believe it. Its incredibly invasive and anyway, what do they believe will happen here? Just because the restaurant won't serve them, they will immediately go home and start dieting?

Me thinks they will be so depressed at this embarressment that they will go home and eat more.

reply to post by geek101


Try Juicy-Juice instead of Kool-Aid to deny thirst.

Seriously though, your kids are lucky to have a parent that can manage this. Both the budgeting and the cooking skills.

I resent the fact that you say people are fat out of laziness though. People who work 60-70 hours a week are not lazy.

reply to post by jackinthebox


I didn't say they were fat because they were lazy. I said they don't cook, and prefer fast food cos they are lazy. There is a difference. Not sure what the kool aid comment was about though.

And i don't think this has anything to do with ability to cook. Everyone can cook something....most people don't try. I bloody hate cooking, but unless i want my kids to starve to death, i don't have much choice. Suppose i could send them out to Macdonalds every day.


edit to add...oh, the kool aid comment...my avatar. and i am guessing something about my opinions being the standard.

[edit on 2-2-2008 by geek101]

reply to post by geek101


Your avatar is a knock off of the sugar-drink Kool-Aid commonly consumed by poor fat lazy Americans.

If you don't have time to cook or shop because you are at work all the time, the you're stuck with fast foods most nights.

And no, not everyone can cook. Some people don't even have a kitchen for that matter.

EDIT to add: I hate fast-food and love to cook, but can't.


[edit on 2/2/0808 by jackinthebox]

Originally posted by jackinthebox
reply to post by geek101

 

Your avatar is a knock off of the sugar-drink Kool-Aid commonly consumed by poor fat lazy Americans.

If you don't have time to cook or shop because you are at work all the time, the you're stuck with fast foods most nights.

And no, not everyone can cook. Some people don't even have a kitchen for that matter.

about my avatar...didn't know that :-)

the cases you mention are exceptions. But honestly, it takes 15 minutes to make chick pea curry, pasta and tuna AND rice.

But i agree, some people are bound by what choices they can make. But i see women around ehre feeding their kids nothing but frozen chips, burgers and all that and they are not pushed for time.
So maybe we both have points here.


p.s....isn't that the way it always is? (you love to cook...can't...i hate cooking, but can...lol)

[edit on 2-2-2008 by geek101]

reply to post by geek101

p.s....isn't that the way it always is? (you love to cook...can't...i hate cooking, but can...lol)

Ya got that right.



Cheers!

reply to post by TrueAmerican


This alone would start a Civil War. A war fought over hamburgers, shakes, lard and god knows what else. Who would write a bill like this? I myself are slim and I do exercise. "BUT" I wouldn't want to be walking down the street past an "obese" person with an ice cream cone in my hand. That could end up being a bad event for me, crushed to death over an ice cream cone.........

As someone who works in a restaurant, quite simply this, even if it passes, would be almost unenforceable. I have something approaching 1000 guests a month. There are another 50 or so people in my store that also serve food, in similar amounts. Tonight alone, we sold well over $10000 worth of food and drinks. How exactly do you plan on enforcing this? The simple fact of the matter is that while you may make it illegal, how do you determine obese v fat? It's hard enough to enforce things like non-serving someone who is already intoxicated - one or two drinks is not enough to show up in people you don't already know.. Putting the burden for anything legal on already overburdened servers really sucks. We work on tips, you really think it's easy to refuse to serve anyone ANYTHING? While I have and will refuse to serve alcohol to someone, I do this knowing that if I do not, I could go to jail, and knowing that I will almost certainly end up paying to wait on that table - in terms of taxes, tipouts, etc.

Few things people may not realize about food service.
I personally have to pay out 3.5% of my total sales on a given day to the bar, busser and food expeditor. So if I sold $1000 of food, I'm paying out $35. I then get taxed on 10% of those sales - the IRS assumes I made $100 in tips - regardless of what I actually did make. I must claim 100% of the tips I make, but at minimum, I get taxed on that 10% figure, not what I actually may be walking home with.

So if I sell $100 worth of food, and for aforementioned legal reasons or for any other reason, I do not get tipped, I actually end up paying out $3.50 straight out of my pocket, then I later get taxed as though I still had a minimum of $10 left over AFTER that tip out.

If you stiff your server, not only are you rude and ignorant (most likely), but that server had to pay for the privilege of kissing your ass. Laws like this just mean that servers have to pay out even more for that..

If you want to legislate, legislate portion sizes and calorie control. Make the restaurants themselves responsible for a 500 calorie total meal, or less, including drinks. Legislating things like this that make it the server's responsibility are just completely infeasible and unenforceable. You can easily check a restaurants menu, much harder to check every guest..

ahh yes...I can see it know, that ceo of exxon, is it?? ya know, the one that looked like he could make up two of me....has to take a business trip to mississippi...so, he decides to drive there...while driving through mississippi, his stomach starts to growl!! he's hungry, so he stops at the nearest resturant...
sorry, sir, we can't serve you, it's the law..you're too fat!!!
ya sure, there's a better chance that the space station is gonna come crashing down on my head today!!!

I guess at least the ceo of exxon, or whatever it is could at least have the funds to get a nice suite in some hotel that has a kitchen, he could cook his food himself if he found he had to make an extended trip into the state...
but what about other fat business men, who can't? are they to starve till they can leave the state? what about any tourist who journey into the state and decide to spend a couple of days? gee....were any of those nice people who traveled down there to help them out after katrina overly fat? I guess this is kind of a not so kind way of saying don't bother coming back to help the next time??

our goal should be to help the obese find out why they are obese, and to help them solve that problem....not starve to death any unfortunate fat soul that might happen to have to spent some time in the state!!

I doubt the bill would pass, I doubt if that ceo of exxon would denied his meal if he had to make an extended visit into the state no matter how fat he was even if it did. and, I really, really think that the state's tourism industry might suffer just a tad if it was passed...
our lawmakers in this country are idiots!!

hey I have an idea, bring back the production jobs, ya know, the ones where you actually have to do some work!! and value them as much as you do the fat slobs sitting at their desk pushing files all day and the welfare do nothings that just sit and watch their children play!! it seems like the more physically demanding your job is (burns more calories by the way!!) the less money you have for food!! and the least demanding your job is...well, hey you can afford more than enough food for your non-demanding lifestyle!!
wonder how much that influences the state of things?

[edit on 2-2-2008 by dawnstar]

While it is a good idea to get people to loose unhealthy eating habits, this type of government involvement simply wont work. Sadly, we ate stuck with fat folks who do not care about their health nor how it effects others.

Poor eating habits begin in childhood and that is where to stop the problem. Nutrition should be taught in school science classes. Schools should be banned from selling soda and other empty foods. Like we do with alcohol, food advertising should be limited and regulated. High fructose corn syrup, an evil industrial product, should be banned for human consumption.

Personally, I think that fat people should be required to pay for TWO seats on planes. When sitting next to a supersized individual, you end up crushed into a corner of your seat, a seat you paid good money for. To give them more needed exercise, we could mandate that fat people have to stand on busses, no seating allowed. We could pass laws that mandate a scale with height scanning technology be placed in the entry of every restaurant. If a patron was above the weight limit, they would be shocked like cattle and denied entry. Electroshock therapy for obesity. We could make all fast food meals out of soy, fiber, and Soilent green. We could make it illegal to manufacture clothing above a healthy size. Then fat people would have to make their own, stay at home, or loose weight. We could mandate sterilization of obese individuals. That would motivate a few to shape up, and the rest would get removed from the gene pool. We could create forced labor camps for the obese. Make them work on a farm growing food while limiting their caloric intake. They could also clean up the fast food trash along the highway. We could make all doors narrower to limit who could enter. Change seat belt manufacturing so that they could not accommodate the overweight. Then we could ticket them every time they drove without a seat belt. We could make it illegal to serve fat people at a restaurant... Ohhh wait, that would be a dumb idea. Never mind.

Despite all of the great comments on healthy eating, organic food, economics, educaton, etc. - this issue is really about the slippery slope of fascism that the U.S. has started sliding down. The Nanny State.

First it's smokers. Then it's fatties. Who's next to have their liberty taken and their daily lives micro-managed by a bunch of Holier-Than-Thou elitist beaurocrats? The elderly? Oh yeah they already do that, it's called Social Security and Medicare. How about people with children? Anyone remember the recent forced vaccinations in Maryland? Not to mention that there is already a push in many cities to designate certain public places as "adults only" and I'm not talking strip clubs and video stores. What about people with bad credit? On the heels of all the economic troubles these days there are bound to be a growing number of people like that.

Where will it stop? It will stop when either we are all completely dependent on government for our every need and exist in a society of benevolent slavery or we're all in detainment camps. OR maybe we will all decide we have had enough of this BS! Vote every incumbant out of office! Any elected official that does not serve the will of the people should go.

If Mississippi or any other state allows this, they deserve what fate will surely give them and it won't be a cheeseburger.

This is just an attempt to eliminate any possibility of us evolving into Huttites.

Originally posted by jackinthebox
reply to post by TheHypnoToad

 

People need convenient fast food because they work 60 hours a week to pay for a studio apartment that doesn't have a kitchen. I hate fast food. I used to get a craving once in a while, like maybe once or twice a year, but try eating that crap every day.

People are fat because they can't afford healthy food.

[edit on 2/2/0808 by jackinthebox]

I would agree with you to an extent. However I said "a lot of people" eat fast food because of convenience or because they like it. I didn't make a generalization and say that all people who eat fast food do.

Besides, I find that it's cheaper to go to the grocery store than to eat fast food. I am talking about buying stuff to make sandwiches with, or a can of soup... things that do not require a kitchen to make. I lived in a dorm when I was in college, and could still buy groceries and make food without a kitchen. Except that I didn't like leaving campus, and so I didn't go to the grocery often. So I stayed on and around campus most of the time, and did eat at McDonald's usually twice a day for almost two years.

I ate it every day because it was easy, and because at the time I loved it. I can't stand to eat fast food now, after having given it up for a while.

Definitely wasn't cheaper, and definitely was easy.

gonna need to get a prader willy card before you can eat at mcnasty's...bwuashahahahah....thats rich...what a joke

W. T. Mayhall, Jr.
District 40 - DeSoto
Republican

John Read
District 112 - Jackson
Republican

Bobby Shows
District 89 - Jones
Democrat

billstatus.ls.state.ms.us...
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.

I guess that covers most everything 'cept the local hotdog vendors.

(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 ...
... 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...

It would seem that this would equate to scales at the door, to include information similar to that which is posted next to various amusement park rides; you must be this tall and under so many pounds in order to be served in our establishment.

Laughable, to say the least.

One truly has to wonder just what these three were thinking when they came up with such a ludicrous idea... certainly NOT re-election. :shk:

Quick Question, here... and May_all Read what Shows:

What about those who MAY be deemed obese by the standards set forth in Section 41-101-1, BUT they simply wish to HAVE A SALAD, or similar. ?

Personallly, I'd have to say this bill has about as much chance of passing as a TU-24 sized kidney stone.

*sheesh*

Freedom is a precious thing and if you leave your freedom to legislators you will have your freedoms taken away. They know how to live your life better then you do and want to fix every aspect of your life including taking your money.

Beware the freedoms that you have today can and will be gone tomorrow if we as a nation are complacent. Rik Riley

i can't believe some of the stories that are coming down the pipe lately.
the laws they want passed and mandated.....it sucks......the 'good ole days' are long gone....you know, when you could do #.....when you could think for yourself...
everyone is so worried about everyone else.....

On the surface ... this is wack. I simply don't understand how a state that had more than 500 lynchings since 1880 could have such a legislation against the obese unless... they are prejudiced against obesity too. Who's overweight in the state legislature???? This guy's a bit portly don't you think? Governor Haley B.

A river runs through it.

Vic

[edit on 2-2-2008 by V Kaminski]

OH...so where would Teddy Kennedy dine? For that matter where would most of the Senate, Congress and the fat cats eat?

"Cuse me a minute wiles I get a nother PBR from the fridge sos I can ob'serv ATS...."