Most obese people lose about 14 pounds in the first month.

How is this any different? I’ll answer that for you - it isn’t. It is discrimination pure and simple and I’d like to know when people are going to say “enough”!?

I smoke and to be completely honest, I don’t like to smoke during the day and never did, even when I could do it at my desk. That did not keep me from bitterly resenting the sanctimonious anti-smoking campaigners - how dare ANYONE tell me how to live my life!? This is more of the same. I am not skinny and probably never will be. And I’m probably 50-70 pounds above what the actuarial tables consider to be healthy. All that being said, I’m fairly healthy, relatively health problem-free except for the residual effect (good and bad) from my years as a figure skater. Good effect? My physical being is pretty strong. Bad effect? Think about butt hitting ice repeatedly, every day, 6 days per week, 50 weeks of the year. Any wonder I have arthritis in my spine?

So next we need to ban figure skating! All those orthopedic problems, don’t you know!

This has just become ASININE.

A member of the restaurant association in MS told me that this was spiteful attempt to get back at the recent smoking bans in Mississippi cities. IOW, ‘if I can’t smoke in certain places, then fat people can’t eat in restaurants.’

Also of note:

Many legislators are supporting a $1.00 tax increase per pack on cigarette sales. There is actually a billboard downtown on the approach to the MS state capitol that show these choices:

Greedy tobacco companies or health care for children

No kidding.

Someone should ask Mayhall if there will be someone at every restaurant with a BMI scale that you must step on before you order a slice of pecan pie a la mode.

“He hopes it will ‘call attention to the serious problem of obesity’” I can’t express how sick I am of the legislative process being misused to “send a message” or “call attention.” Crafting laws - even ones that have no chance of actually becoming law - is NOT the proper way to call attention to any issue, and then when you consider that some of these wacky bills actually DO become law…

The proposed legislation appears to be just … insane and un-American. I expect the authors are receiving a lot of angry mail.
FWIW, private health care and/or employers who supply health care can be just as intrusive about habits generally considered unhealthy. This is more about control than how socialized a health care system is.

(think racist Margaret Sanger)
This was new to me so I browsed around. The evidence seems thin, and some of the quotes used by anti-abortion-rights/pro-life groups appear to be simply false.

I learned this a couple of years ago when my health-nut father (bless his soul) died at the age of 69; he exercised heavily, kept his body mass under the norm, didn’t smoke(hated smokers in fact), ate all the correct foods, moderate wine drinker yet he ended up with stage four lung cancer and regretfully died three months after diagnosis.

My mother(bless her soul) on the other hand smoked, was a little over the norm weight, took walks but not into heavy duty exercise, didn’t worry about the correct type of food yet she managed to live 7 years longer than my father; she regretgully died from ovarian cancer at the age of 76.

What I know is that there is no way the government can prevent me from disease or death and that taking a thirty minute walk every other day does wonders for your health both mental and physical.

I am a tall, big-boned female who is a little over the norm but not heavy however, when placed next to an anexoric I look gigantic.

It’s true appearances can be deceiving and remember the camera adds ten pounds to the image you see.

Speaking of Nazis, they were big into the ‘anti-smoker’ mindset, I have a poster which depicts a Nazi in uniform whose giant jackboot is stomping down upon a cigar which at the tip of the cigar is the face of a black person to show how necessary it is to stomp out ‘the dirty people’

It does tie into the eugenics concept (think racist Margaret Sanger) that blacks are (in sanger’s mind) ‘dirty’ and should be stomped out, so to speak.

Nazis were also big Greenies too.

The underlying theme about it all is the desire to create ‘a new world which is pure and clean and perfect’.

By his standard, anorexic people should also be targeted - perhaps by placing someone in the restaurant restroom to make sure they don’t binge and purge.

It is this mindset that leads to the NHS rationing care based not on need but on but on a subjective criteria having to do with lifestyle or viability.