US law-maker suggest restaurants should ignore obese clients

A law-maker from Mississippi, John Read, offers restaurants to stop serving food to overweight customers.

However, Mr. Read does not cherish hopes that his bill will come into effect. He says that the goal of the project is neither to famish people nor to humiliate them. He just wants to attract the attention of citizens and the government to the growing problem of obesity in the USA.

"I was trying to shed a little light on the number one problem in Mississippi," he said.

“Do not take offence, please”, with these words he addressed to obese people. The official acknowledged that being a 230-pound man himself, he would have a hard time with his bill as a law. It is worthy of note that nearly 30 percent of adults in Mississippi are considered obese.

The USA is not the only country to try to solve the obesity problem by legislature. For example, Britons who are considered to be the most obese European nation, try to control school nutrition and TV advertisement of sweets.

In Italy, the mayor of a provincial town promised to pay an allowance for every lost kilogram.

Apparently, Read tried to follow the example of his foreign counterparts. But he is unlikely to succeed. Steve Holland, the director of local department of health, criticized his idea heavily and promised to prevent it from coming into effect.

Although obesity is an individual clinical condition, it is increasingly viewed as a serious and growing public health problem: excessive body weight has been shown to predispose to various diseases, particularly cardiovascular diseases, diabetes mellitus type 2, sleep apnea and osteoarthritis.

A large number of medical conditions have been associated with obesity. Health consequences are categorised as being the result of either increased fat mass (osteoarthritis, obstructive sleep apnea, social stigma) or increased number of fat cells (diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease). Mortality is increased in obesity, with a BMI of over 32 being associated with a doubled risk of death. There are alterations in the body's response to insulin (insulin resistance), a proinflammatory state and an increased tendency to thrombosis (prothrombotic state).

Disease associations may be dependent or independent of the distribution of adipose tissue. Central obesity (male-type or waist-predominant obesity, characterised by a high waist-hip ratio), is an important risk factor for the metabolic syndrome, the clustering of a number of diseases and risk factors that heavily predispose for cardiovascular disease. These are diabetes mellitus type 2, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, and triglyceride levels (combined hyperlipidemia).

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