Three legislators want to make it illegal for restaurants to serve obese customers in Mississippi.
House Bill No. 282, which was introduced this month, says: 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.
Leaving aside the issue of whether this law would actually reduce obesity (I doubt it), this story put me in mind of a passage from an article Father James Schall wrote a while back entitled The Right To Be Obese:
As I often tell my classes, I have four intellectual heroes, three of whom-St. Thomas Aquinas, Samuel Johnson, and G.K. Chesterton-were quite obese, to use the surgeon general’s term. As for my fourth hero, Aristotle, I have no statistics on his rotundity. This lacuna constitutes a rare gap in Greek scientific knowledge. So I’m deathly afraid that this new edict will wipe out a good part of the intellectual heritage of mankind once word gets out that these once-esteemed gentlemen weighed as much as an average offensive lineman for the Redskins or the Rams (none of whom, to be sure, is “obese”).
Any law that would make it illegal to serve G.K. Chesterton and St. Thomas Aquinas will not get my support.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In