Mississippi State Rep. John Read unveiled a controversial diet plan for the state: prohibit obese people from dining out. Under a law Read and two others proposed, Mississippi restaurants would be barred from serving obese customers. But it doesn’t specify how obesity would be defined or how a waiter would be expected to determine if a customer was, in fact, obese. Would the state pay for scales to be placed at every hostess station?
But Read never expected the bill to be taken seriously. He proposed it only to draw attention to what he called Mississippi’s biggest problem. Thirty percent of the state’s citizens are obese, ironically including Read himself, and 66 percent are overweight.
The obesity crisis in America is far from underreported. The widely distributed statistics: 127 million Americans are overweight, 60 million of them are obese, childhood obesity is on the rise and obesity increases the risk of illness and death. The obesity wave has even begun affecting the nation’s pets. Although the problem is nationally recognized, the Mississippi plan is stirring up a great deal of controversy.
The governor threatens to veto the law on arrival and citizens are uncomfortable with the idea of the government playing mommy and forcing them to eat their veggies. The controversy isn’t surprising considering the plan amounts to government-sponsored anorexia, which is a universal health care plan even Michael Moore couldn’t get behind.
The Mississippi bill isn’t the first obesity-related government initiative and it surely won’t be the last. At least 25 states are debating or have enacted laws to combat obesity, initiating debates about how far the government can go in protecting citizens’ health. Most of the state governments that attempt to legislate good health have targeted children.
Many states have debated laws restricting the sale of candy and soda in schools, while others are considering putting all nutrition information on fast food menus. Arkansas students have their BMI tested and mailed to their parents. New York City assemblyman Felix Ortiz has proposed six different bills that not only target the sale of fatty foods in schools, but also encourage health and physical education.
The most controversial proposal is the Twinkie tax, also known as a fat tax. This is just what it sounds like — a small tax on fatty foods to fund health education. The idea — around since the ‘70s — is that using money consumers spent on junk food to fund health education would encourage healthier eating habits and could drive down the cost of nutritious food. The World Health Organization jumped on the fat tax plan a few years ago, encouraging countries to adopt fat taxes in order to check the growth of worldwide obesity.
These proposals, while well-intentioned, are generating accusations of unfair government interference. Some claim that taxing junk food infringes on our right to indulge in whatever foods we please and that it’s not the government’s place to police our dinner tables. This argument has been made against the Mississippi restaurant ban.
The government’s obesity plans are starting to resemble the recent rash of smoking bans, which people compare to the Prohibition movement. Once lawmakers begin mandating good health, it’s impossible to tell where they’ll stop: They could jack up the prices of foods linked to cancer or plaster warning labels on high-cholesterol foods (as hilariously proposed in this scene from Thank You for Smoking).
While the fat tax is unlikely to be voted into existence soon, anti-obesity legislation will probably continue to rise, in the form of health education and exercise incentives. Still, there’s a chance this could become a national movement if noted weight-loss proponent Mike Huckabee ends up in the White House. He might even try employing Stephen Colbert’s proposed slogan: “No Fatties.” That’d look good on a bill. Not so much on a restaurant door.