Obese diners not welcome in Mississippi

This is crazy, nanny statism at it's worst. There is a bill in Mississippi to require restaurants to refuse service to the obese. [Link]

John Edwards and his plan for mandatory health checkups may be gone, but it looks like his brand of micro-meddling has popped up in Mississippi, where restaurants will be required not to serve “the obese” — restaurants will become the exclusive province of Teh Slim:

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. 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. A food establishment shall be entitled to rely on the criteria for obesity in those written materials when determining whether or not it is allowed to serve food to any person.

My first thought was this had to be some sort of joke; a Swiftian ruse, as it were.

Not so, says Sandy Szwarc, who talked to one of the the authors: