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“Large” Restaurant Customers need special accommodation?
Replies
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NorthCascades wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »I just find the whole notion of approaching someone who is an adult and telling them they are fat (as if they didn't know it) and then telling them what you demand they do to lose weight is incredibly offensive and, for the vast majority of people, would likely be counterproductive.
etc.
Just regarding the bolded, some Eastern cultures very much do this... and to complete strangers! All the time! Especially to large Western citizens...
I admit that I also would find it offensive, but apparently not everyone does. Offense is very subjective. And, from what I gather, it's not as though the people saying it are always saying it in a derogatory fashion. It's more of a cautionary, "Hey, buddy. Don't know if you noticed, but you're kind of getting up there in weight. You maybe ought to do something about that." And that's it. I think a lot of people might interpret that unkindly, but that doesn't mean it was meant that way. Doesn't intent matter, too?
Not trying to start a fight but trying to highlight that different cultures have different approaches to obesity and how to help. And maybe a one-size-fits-all approach doesn't truly fit all. Perhaps, as you say, this approach is counterproductive for "the vast majority of people," but at least a few people have piped up in this thread that would indicate this style of approach wasn't counterproductive to them.
People are individuals and they're motivated by a wide variety of things. I also was larger as a kid and caught a good amount of flak for it from my father, who had always been athletic and in shape, so I do relate to your experience, there. His very direct approach felt unkind to me, at the time. Also like you, I wanted to find my own solution. Once I did, he was one of my biggest cheerleaders in my attempts to lose weight, but some people really do respond to a direct approach.
Other cultures have different approaches to obesity, but this culture has its own. Some cultures have arranged marriages, but that doesn't work here. There are a lot of ways to skin a cat, but once you start down a path you can't just teleport to a different one.
Well, our culture isn't exactly knocking it out of the park in the battle against obesity, is it? (Nor has it been since the food pyramid was introduced through much government lobbying, despite the rising levels of obesity being the main reason for the food pyramid to begin with.)
Love the mish-mash of idioms, though. "There are a lot of ways to skin a cat, but you don't change knives mid-skin," might be more consistent. ... Please don't skin cats, though. Culturally that's frowned upon here
30,000 Americans die every year in traffic accidents. There's a lot of things we're not doing a great job on, but I don't see threads here about how people need to be made aware of their hazardous lifestyle every time they get behind the wheel.
I'm guessing you don't think it would be appropriate to tell every driver you see that they could run over a child or hit a deer, and they should really be using a form of transportation that's safer and less polluting. What it is about obesity that makes this ok?
And due to a number of steps taken the deaths per miles travelled has steadily declined
https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5717dbc452bcd025008bde4a-750-563.png5 -
That's well said Bry. I've never been obese, so granted my view is probably a bit different than someone who has, but that said, I think we're largely on the same page here.Bry_Fitness70 wrote: »Bry_Fitness70 wrote: »Bry_Fitness70 wrote: »Bry_Fitness70 wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »Bry_Fitness70 wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »Bry_Fitness70 wrote: »I understand their business savvy in doing this, they want their customers to feel comfortable, but does it benefit society as a whole to encourage and enable a dangerous state of health?
Bars make a lot of money selling booze to alcoholics - the bar's business is to provide a comfortable atmosphere to buy and consume alcohol, but look at all of the wreckage associated with this. So if I created a business model based upon modifying my bar so that it had softer floors for trips and falls, padded corners, comfortable areas to the side for passing out, IVs drips set up for those whose BAC reached dangerous levels, larger toilets for getting sick in, etc., is the extra money I would earn really a good thing?
"But these alcoholics know they are alcoholics, so refusing to accommodate their addiction is shaming them. They will just drink at home or some other business who will be happy to enable them." I don't think anyone would accept that theory when it comes to alcoholism, but when it comes to obesity…
I think there's a pretty big leap between "Hey, it would be nice if this place had some bigger chairs" and "Let's install IV drips so people can drink more alcohol."
Restaurants are already selling large portions of high calorie foods. If you want to go someplace and order a 3,000+ calorie meal, nobody is going to turn down the money. They'll sell you just about anything you want to eat, however often you want to eat it, at just about any portion size you desire. Why is the idea that some of them may want to increase appeal by offering bigger chairs the spot where we get worried about facilitation of obesity?
Is the job of a restaurant to benefit society as a whole? If so, the restaurant industry has already missed that goal and by a huge margin. So why draw the line when it comes to a restaurant making the voluntary decision that a larger portion of their customers can sit down comfortably?
It is a giant leap into the absurd, but that was the point
No one would ever create a business model like this fictitious bar, we would all be appalled - and yet gradually retrofitting accommodations to allow for obese people is a step away from confronting the root cause of the problem and enabling those with food addictions.
If food addiction is real, then restaurants are already enabling with their menu offerings and portion sizes. Why is a more comfortable chair a less acceptable form of "enabling"?
Why is it the job of a restaurant to confront the root cause of the problem anyway?
Why is it the job of a bartender to cut off a drunk customer and stop taking his money? Dram shop laws make bars liable for drunk customers that injure others, so it became their job.
Why is it the job of a drug store to prevent me from buying certain quantities of specific over the counter drugs? The FDA restricts the sale of these drugs because people have used abused them, so it became their job.
One could make the argument that while food addiction doesn't seem to affect anyone other than the addict, there are consequences beyond that. We seem to be heading toward a single-payer health insurance system in the US, so more and more we are sharing healthcare costs, and medications and procedures associated with obesity are very expensive. Our collective resources are being diverted to treating self-inflicted medical issues from obesity at the expense of other afflictions.
We should also care about the quality of life of our citizens - impaired mobility, diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, heart disease, increased susceptibility to stroke and cancer, etc., are a blight on people's productivity and happiness. We have no problem confronting the impaired health (both mental and physical) of smokers, alcoholics, or drug addicts but somehow food addiction is a "mind your own business" condition.
I don't think it's about not caring, whether a neighbors health or our own finances. With me it's a question of who makes the decision, who enforces the decision and what overall metric is used to make the decision.
Where would you be comfortable regarding taking another's personal decision into your own hands?
I'm just providing a different perspective. I'm not advocating any type of government intervention - I'm just encouraging people to look at how we approach other types of addictions and to perhaps pump the brakes a little on the enabling.
I hear you, seriously. I'm a recovering alky..so I completely understand the problems with enabling. I'd very much like to see the 'unhealthy ' make better choices too, but...maybe it's the years spent on political forums 🤣 but I'm very wary of slippery slopes and the prospect of stepping into someone's very personal space today is just loaded with them.
We all kind of stood around with our hands in our pockets and watched my mom go to an early grave due to self-inflicted lifestyle issues. We were really nice. We took her feelings into account. We respected all of her wishes and just watched her do unhealthy things. She had a bad temper and wouldn't be told what to do. And she died well before her time and my young kids will have almost no memories of their grandmother. Everyone involved lost because we chose to enable...
So yeah, I'm anti-shaming and anti-judging, but I'm also anti-enabling. If I could go back in time and do things over I wouldn't have made it so comfortable for her to circle the drain with her terrible lifestyle choices. I'm not making that same mistake with my dad and I am more firmly engaged, and he has quit smoking, drinks less, started eating better, and gets some amount of exercise - I'm not taking credit for that, he had to make those changes, but accountability to me has made some difference.
First, I'm sorry about your mom, and glad things are working out better with your dad. I'm simply trying to keep discussion within the boundaries of this topic and public accommodations. I agree with you about the dangers and ramifications of enabling, but we are also assuming a whole heck of a lot if there's any talk of taking a strangers decision out of their hands, or ostracizing them by way of not allowing them to enjoy the same simple pleasures others do.
It may sound idealistic, but first and foremost people are people, whether obese or not. Same feelings/thoughts/likes/dislikes/opinions as many of the rest of us who may or may not have had to deal with that particular burden. And that's how I will approach them.
My only quandary/grey area regarding the topic is where we cross the line into infringing upon another citizens rights legally or ethically and what the best solution may be (in the spirit of this debate forum) while still refusing to trample on someone's dignity. And that dignity...that's one of those things that doesn't seem to carry much weight any more, unless it's ours that's being stepped on.
I still feel that app the woman in the OP is developing is the best solution I've seen yet.
I agree with everything you said.
To be clear, I'm not telling restaurants what they should and shouldn't do - if providing more comfortable chairs for overweight people makes good business sense, then I wouldn't stop them from doing it. If they decide that offering huge portions and increasing the salt/sugar/fat content of their food will increase sales, then they have the right to do so as long as they are transparent about it.
My angle concerns the larger societal implications of institutionalizing food addiction by modifying menus and rearranging public accommodations to enable dysfunctional and self-destructive eating habits. You can make a case that it is profiting from the misery of others. Yes, eating yourself to the point where you can no longer comfortably fit on standard furniture is a miserable situation to be in, no matter how you frame it.
Pure anecdote incoming - but I think it fits here. My dad's long time doctor threw him out of his office the last time they met due to dad's refusal to take care of himself. For context, it had been about 25 years of doc/patient relationship to get to this point. Right or wrong, I (and brothers/mom) all took the docs side.
On the bold part of the quote...
If this was a permanent decision, for a doctor, I find it a bad move. While I can understand the frustration that the doc might have had on a personal level, regarding your dad, and considering their long-term relationship, he better be the good example, doing jumping jacks from room to room, when he sees his patients. His staff and he better all be at a healthy BMI themselves, too...
Around here, all the people involved in healthcare on any level, are just a part of the average big population, and when it comes to giving advise about nutrition and overall healthy lifestyle, they mostly don't have a leg to stand on...much less should throw patients out of the office...IMO
Under normal circumstances I would agree with you. Dad was a classic blamer though, all doc's/mom's/everyone elses fault why he couldn't lose weight and was getting ill. Doc C. was a rabid fitness nut and just ran out of patience. Like I said, for right or wrong...but I understand why he did it.
I can relate... I have some stubborn family members....
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That's well said Bry. I've never been obese, so granted my view is probably a bit different than someone who has, but that said, I think we're largely on the same page here.Bry_Fitness70 wrote: »Bry_Fitness70 wrote: »Bry_Fitness70 wrote: »Bry_Fitness70 wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »Bry_Fitness70 wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »Bry_Fitness70 wrote: »I understand their business savvy in doing this, they want their customers to feel comfortable, but does it benefit society as a whole to encourage and enable a dangerous state of health?
Bars make a lot of money selling booze to alcoholics - the bar's business is to provide a comfortable atmosphere to buy and consume alcohol, but look at all of the wreckage associated with this. So if I created a business model based upon modifying my bar so that it had softer floors for trips and falls, padded corners, comfortable areas to the side for passing out, IVs drips set up for those whose BAC reached dangerous levels, larger toilets for getting sick in, etc., is the extra money I would earn really a good thing?
"But these alcoholics know they are alcoholics, so refusing to accommodate their addiction is shaming them. They will just drink at home or some other business who will be happy to enable them." I don't think anyone would accept that theory when it comes to alcoholism, but when it comes to obesity…
I think there's a pretty big leap between "Hey, it would be nice if this place had some bigger chairs" and "Let's install IV drips so people can drink more alcohol."
Restaurants are already selling large portions of high calorie foods. If you want to go someplace and order a 3,000+ calorie meal, nobody is going to turn down the money. They'll sell you just about anything you want to eat, however often you want to eat it, at just about any portion size you desire. Why is the idea that some of them may want to increase appeal by offering bigger chairs the spot where we get worried about facilitation of obesity?
Is the job of a restaurant to benefit society as a whole? If so, the restaurant industry has already missed that goal and by a huge margin. So why draw the line when it comes to a restaurant making the voluntary decision that a larger portion of their customers can sit down comfortably?
It is a giant leap into the absurd, but that was the point No one would ever create a business model like this fictitious bar, we would all be appalled - and yet gradually retrofitting accommodations to allow for obese people is a step away from confronting the root cause of the problem and enabling those with food addictions.
If food addiction is real, then restaurants are already enabling with their menu offerings and portion sizes. Why is a more comfortable chair a less acceptable form of "enabling"?
Why is it the job of a restaurant to confront the root cause of the problem anyway?
Why is it the job of a bartender to cut off a drunk customer and stop taking his money? Dram shop laws make bars liable for drunk customers that injure others, so it became their job.
Why is it the job of a drug store to prevent me from buying certain quantities of specific over the counter drugs? The FDA restricts the sale of these drugs because people have used abused them, so it became their job.
One could make the argument that while food addiction doesn't seem to affect anyone other than the addict, there are consequences beyond that. We seem to be heading toward a single-payer health insurance system in the US, so more and more we are sharing healthcare costs, and medications and procedures associated with obesity are very expensive. Our collective resources are being diverted to treating self-inflicted medical issues from obesity at the expense of other afflictions.
We should also care about the quality of life of our citizens - impaired mobility, diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, heart disease, increased susceptibility to stroke and cancer, etc., are a blight on people's productivity and happiness. We have no problem confronting the impaired health (both mental and physical) of smokers, alcoholics, or drug addicts but somehow food addiction is a "mind your own business" condition.
I don't think it's about not caring, whether a neighbors health or our own finances. With me it's a question of who makes the decision, who enforces the decision and what overall metric is used to make the decision.
Where would you be comfortable regarding taking another's personal decision into your own hands?
I'm just providing a different perspective. I'm not advocating any type of government intervention - I'm just encouraging people to look at how we approach other types of addictions and to perhaps pump the brakes a little on the enabling.
I hear you, seriously. I'm a recovering alky..so I completely understand the problems with enabling. I'd very much like to see the 'unhealthy ' make better choices too, but...maybe it's the years spent on political forums 🤣 but I'm very wary of slippery slopes and the prospect of stepping into someone's very personal space today is just loaded with them.
We all kind of stood around with our hands in our pockets and watched my mom go to an early grave due to self-inflicted lifestyle issues. We were really nice. We took her feelings into account. We respected all of her wishes and just watched her do unhealthy things. She had a bad temper and wouldn't be told what to do. And she died well before her time and my young kids will have almost no memories of their grandmother. Everyone involved lost because we chose to enable...
So yeah, I'm anti-shaming and anti-judging, but I'm also anti-enabling. If I could go back in time and do things over I wouldn't have made it so comfortable for her to circle the drain with her terrible lifestyle choices. I'm not making that same mistake with my dad and I am more firmly engaged, and he has quit smoking, drinks less, started eating better, and gets some amount of exercise - I'm not taking credit for that, he had to make those changes, but accountability to me has made some difference.
First, I'm sorry about your mom, and glad things are working out better with your dad. I'm simply trying to keep discussion within the boundaries of this topic and public accommodations. I agree with you about the dangers and ramifications of enabling, but we are also assuming a whole heck of a lot if there's any talk of taking a strangers decision out of their hands, or ostracizing them by way of not allowing them to enjoy the same simple pleasures others do.
It may sound idealistic, but first and foremost people are people, whether obese or not. Same feelings/thoughts/likes/dislikes/opinions as many of the rest of us who may or may not have had to deal with that particular burden. And that's how I will approach them.
My only quandary/grey area regarding the topic is where we cross the line into infringing upon another citizens rights legally or ethically and what the best solution may be (in the spirit of this debate forum) while still refusing to trample on someone's dignity. And that dignity...that's one of those things that doesn't seem to carry much weight any more, unless it's ours that's being stepped on.
I still feel that app the woman in the OP is developing is the best solution I've seen yet.
I agree with everything you said.
To be clear, I'm not telling restaurants what they should and shouldn't do - if providing more comfortable chairs for overweight people makes good business sense, then I wouldn't stop them from doing it. If they decide that offering huge portions and increasing the salt/sugar/fat content of their food will increase sales, then they have the right to do so as long as they are transparent about it.
My angle concerns the larger societal implications of institutionalizing food addiction by modifying menus and rearranging public accommodations to enable dysfunctional and self-destructive eating habits. You can make a case that it is profiting from the misery of others. Yes, eating yourself to the point where you can no longer comfortably fit on standard furniture is a miserable situation to be in, no matter how you frame it.
Pure anecdote incoming - but I think it fits here. My dad's long time doctor threw him out of his office the last time they met due to dad's refusal to take care of himself. For context, it had been about 25 years of doc/patient relationship to get to this point. Right or wrong, I (and brothers/mom) all took the docs side.
On the bold part of the quote...
If this was a permanent decision, for a doctor, I find it a bad move. While I can understand the frustration that the doc might have had on a personal level, regarding your dad, and considering their long-term relationship, he better be the good example, doing jumping jacks from room to room, when he sees his patients. His staff and he better all be at a healthy BMI themselves, too...
Around here, all the people involved in healthcare on any level, are just a part of the average big population, and when it comes to giving advise about nutrition and overall healthy lifestyle, they mostly don't have a leg to stand on...much less should throw patients out of the office...IMO
Under normal circumstances I would agree with you. Dad was a classic blamer though, all doc's/mom's/everyone elses fault why he couldn't lose weight and was getting ill. Doc C. was a rabid fitness nut and just ran out of patience. Like I said, for right or wrong...but I understand why he did it.
I can relate... I have some stubborn family members....
They'll make ya crazy...for real 0 -
What does the woo mean?1
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sammidelvecchio wrote: »What does the woo mean?
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10722904/can-someone-please-explain-the-woo-reaction 4 -
sammidelvecchio wrote: »What does the woo mean?
And it's good to be aware that if you mention the woo reaction in a post, people are frequently inspired to woo that post, just for fun.
It's like some bizarre twist on the first rule of fight club. 9 -
Imho...
No restaurants should not be required by law to accommodate larger guest that can't fit into a standard seat...
But they should accommodate...0 -
I just find the whole notion of approaching someone who is an adult and telling them they are fat (as if they didn't know it) and then telling them what you demand they do to lose weight is incredibly offensive and, for the vast majority of people, would likely be counterproductive.
etc.
Just regarding the bolded, some Eastern cultures very much do this... and to complete strangers! All the time! Especially to large Western citizens...
I admit that I also would find it offensive, but apparently not everyone does. Offense is very subjective. And, from what I gather, it's not as though the people saying it are always saying it in a derogatory fashion. It's more of a cautionary, "Hey, buddy. Don't know if you noticed, but you're kind of getting up there in weight. You maybe ought to do something about that." And that's it. I think a lot of people might interpret that unkindly, but that doesn't mean it was meant that way. Doesn't intent matter, too?
Not trying to start a fight but trying to highlight that different cultures have different approaches to obesity and how to help. And maybe a one-size-fits-all approach doesn't truly fit all. Perhaps, as you say, this approach is counterproductive for "the vast majority of people," but at least a few people have piped up in this thread that would indicate this style of approach wasn't counterproductive to them.
People are individuals and they're motivated by a wide variety of things. I also was larger as a kid and caught a good amount of flak for it from my father, who had always been athletic and in shape, so I do relate to your experience, there. His very direct approach felt unkind to me, at the time. Also like you, I wanted to find my own solution. Once I did, he was one of my biggest cheerleaders in my attempts to lose weight, but some people really do respond to a direct approach.
I've mentioned this before and this is correct. This is a unique phenomenon in Western cultures today - a regression of enlightenment. Eastern cultures tend to be very deliberate, so if someone asked "Why are you so fat?" it would be out of a sense of inquiry and purpose. Literally asking "What is the purpose of you being so fat?" "Are you trying to accomplish something?"
I think a good comeback would be why does your breath smell like garlic and aged shrimp and have you ever heard of Binaca?
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oh my0
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NorthCascades wrote: »I just find the whole notion of approaching someone who is an adult and telling them they are fat (as if they didn't know it) and then telling them what you demand they do to lose weight is incredibly offensive and, for the vast majority of people, would likely be counterproductive.
etc.
Just regarding the bolded, some Eastern cultures very much do this... and to complete strangers! All the time! Especially to large Western citizens...
I admit that I also would find it offensive, but apparently not everyone does. Offense is very subjective. And, from what I gather, it's not as though the people saying it are always saying it in a derogatory fashion. It's more of a cautionary, "Hey, buddy. Don't know if you noticed, but you're kind of getting up there in weight. You maybe ought to do something about that." And that's it. I think a lot of people might interpret that unkindly, but that doesn't mean it was meant that way. Doesn't intent matter, too?
Not trying to start a fight but trying to highlight that different cultures have different approaches to obesity and how to help. And maybe a one-size-fits-all approach doesn't truly fit all. Perhaps, as you say, this approach is counterproductive for "the vast majority of people," but at least a few people have piped up in this thread that would indicate this style of approach wasn't counterproductive to them.
People are individuals and they're motivated by a wide variety of things. I also was larger as a kid and caught a good amount of flak for it from my father, who had always been athletic and in shape, so I do relate to your experience, there. His very direct approach felt unkind to me, at the time. Also like you, I wanted to find my own solution. Once I did, he was one of my biggest cheerleaders in my attempts to lose weight, but some people really do respond to a direct approach.
Other cultures have different approaches to obesity, but this culture has its own. Some cultures have arranged marriages, but that doesn't work here. There are a lot of ways to skin a cat, but once you start down a path you can't just teleport to a different one.
Well, our culture isn't exactly knocking it out of the park in the battle against obesity, is it? (Nor has it been since the food pyramid was introduced through much government lobbying, despite the rising levels of obesity being the main reason for the food pyramid to begin with.)
Love the mish-mash of idioms, though. "There are a lot of ways to skin a cat, but you don't change knives mid-skin," might be more consistent. ... Please don't skin cats, though. Culturally that's frowned upon here
Is there any country that isn't in the throws of national food insecurity where obesity rates (or at the very least the average BMI) aren't rising?4 -
Re:OP
The question is phrased wrong.
What you are really asking is "should restaurants be forced to accommodate all possible body shapes and sizes?"
The answer to that is quite obvious.
NO.
My wife is tall with long legs. The typical restaurant chair has a seat bed that is too shallow for her to sit comfortably. But a seat with deep seat bed will be uncomfortable for someone 5'5".
The typical restaurant chair requires little people to face the indignity of asking for a child booster seat.
If a lawyer sues on behalf of overweight people and wins it is impossible to believe that every other group who feels left out is not going to sue for mandated accommodation and financial damages.
The cost of compliance won't stop special interests from lobbying for mandates.
Any such mandate would result in seated restaurants becoming private clubs or eliminating seating entirely.4 -
Theoldguy1 wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »I just find the whole notion of approaching someone who is an adult and telling them they are fat (as if they didn't know it) and then telling them what you demand they do to lose weight is incredibly offensive and, for the vast majority of people, would likely be counterproductive.
etc.
Just regarding the bolded, some Eastern cultures very much do this... and to complete strangers! All the time! Especially to large Western citizens...
I admit that I also would find it offensive, but apparently not everyone does. Offense is very subjective. And, from what I gather, it's not as though the people saying it are always saying it in a derogatory fashion. It's more of a cautionary, "Hey, buddy. Don't know if you noticed, but you're kind of getting up there in weight. You maybe ought to do something about that." And that's it. I think a lot of people might interpret that unkindly, but that doesn't mean it was meant that way. Doesn't intent matter, too?
Not trying to start a fight but trying to highlight that different cultures have different approaches to obesity and how to help. And maybe a one-size-fits-all approach doesn't truly fit all. Perhaps, as you say, this approach is counterproductive for "the vast majority of people," but at least a few people have piped up in this thread that would indicate this style of approach wasn't counterproductive to them.
People are individuals and they're motivated by a wide variety of things. I also was larger as a kid and caught a good amount of flak for it from my father, who had always been athletic and in shape, so I do relate to your experience, there. His very direct approach felt unkind to me, at the time. Also like you, I wanted to find my own solution. Once I did, he was one of my biggest cheerleaders in my attempts to lose weight, but some people really do respond to a direct approach.
Other cultures have different approaches to obesity, but this culture has its own. Some cultures have arranged marriages, but that doesn't work here. There are a lot of ways to skin a cat, but once you start down a path you can't just teleport to a different one.
Well, our culture isn't exactly knocking it out of the park in the battle against obesity, is it? (Nor has it been since the food pyramid was introduced through much government lobbying, despite the rising levels of obesity being the main reason for the food pyramid to begin with.)
Love the mish-mash of idioms, though. "There are a lot of ways to skin a cat, but you don't change knives mid-skin," might be more consistent. ... Please don't skin cats, though. Culturally that's frowned upon here
30,000 Americans die every year in traffic accidents. There's a lot of things we're not doing a great job on, but I don't see threads here about how people need to be made aware of their hazardous lifestyle every time they get behind the wheel.
I'm guessing you don't think it would be appropriate to tell every driver you see that they could run over a child or hit a deer, and they should really be using a form of transportation that's safer and less polluting. What it is about obesity that makes this ok?
And due to a number of steps taken the deaths per miles travelled has steadily declined
https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5717dbc452bcd025008bde4a-750-563.png
Yep. A lot of it is hope technology keeps improving. I have cameras in my car that hit the brakes before I run into something or someone. They make it hard to park in this one spot in front of a hedge though.0 -
NorthCascades wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »I just find the whole notion of approaching someone who is an adult and telling them they are fat (as if they didn't know it) and then telling them what you demand they do to lose weight is incredibly offensive and, for the vast majority of people, would likely be counterproductive.
etc.
Just regarding the bolded, some Eastern cultures very much do this... and to complete strangers! All the time! Especially to large Western citizens...
I admit that I also would find it offensive, but apparently not everyone does. Offense is very subjective. And, from what I gather, it's not as though the people saying it are always saying it in a derogatory fashion. It's more of a cautionary, "Hey, buddy. Don't know if you noticed, but you're kind of getting up there in weight. You maybe ought to do something about that." And that's it. I think a lot of people might interpret that unkindly, but that doesn't mean it was meant that way. Doesn't intent matter, too?
Not trying to start a fight but trying to highlight that different cultures have different approaches to obesity and how to help. And maybe a one-size-fits-all approach doesn't truly fit all. Perhaps, as you say, this approach is counterproductive for "the vast majority of people," but at least a few people have piped up in this thread that would indicate this style of approach wasn't counterproductive to them.
People are individuals and they're motivated by a wide variety of things. I also was larger as a kid and caught a good amount of flak for it from my father, who had always been athletic and in shape, so I do relate to your experience, there. His very direct approach felt unkind to me, at the time. Also like you, I wanted to find my own solution. Once I did, he was one of my biggest cheerleaders in my attempts to lose weight, but some people really do respond to a direct approach.
Other cultures have different approaches to obesity, but this culture has its own. Some cultures have arranged marriages, but that doesn't work here. There are a lot of ways to skin a cat, but once you start down a path you can't just teleport to a different one.
Well, our culture isn't exactly knocking it out of the park in the battle against obesity, is it? (Nor has it been since the food pyramid was introduced through much government lobbying, despite the rising levels of obesity being the main reason for the food pyramid to begin with.)
Love the mish-mash of idioms, though. "There are a lot of ways to skin a cat, but you don't change knives mid-skin," might be more consistent. ... Please don't skin cats, though. Culturally that's frowned upon here
30,000 Americans die every year in traffic accidents. There's a lot of things we're not doing a great job on, but I don't see threads here about how people need to be made aware of their hazardous lifestyle every time they get behind the wheel.
I'm guessing you don't think it would be appropriate to tell every driver you see that they could run over a child or hit a deer, and they should really be using a form of transportation that's safer and less polluting. What it is about obesity that makes this ok?
I'm not sure I even understand what you're asking me here.
Of course... there aren't threads like that...here...? This is a fitness site?
Maybe you didn't notice, but I'm also not one of the people who thought that it would be good for a restaurant not to increase their seating, citing social pressure and/or encouraging people to lose weight by making them uncomfortable in public.
So. What are you asking me, if you're asking me anything, at all?
Sorry. Auto-argue I guess.1 -
Re:OP
The question is phrased wrong.
What you are really asking is "should restaurants be forced to accommodate all possible body shapes and sizes?"
The answer to that is quite obvious.
NO.
But that's not the question, and neither (despite some misreading) is "should restaurants be forced to accommodate fat people"? No one has suggested that they should.3 -
Never mind1
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Re:OP
The question is phrased wrong.
What you are really asking is "should restaurants be forced to accommodate all possible body shapes and sizes?"
The answer to that is quite obvious.
NO.
But that's not the question, and neither (despite some misreading) is "should restaurants be forced to accommodate fat people"? No one has suggested that they should.
Anytime anyone asks "should X business do Y" the implication is always "should there be a gov't mandate." Why? Because that is always what follows.
If restaurants "should accommodate" large people then why shouldn't they accommodate people of all shapes and sizes? That is how lawyers and lobbyists think. Then they get judges or legislators to mandate it.
Case in point. Advocates for the handicapped lobbied Holder's DOJ to reinterpret the ADA to mean that all public pools MUST have both ramp entrance AND a fixed lift arm.
This would have caused nearly every hotel to close their pools and nearly all public pools and many YMCA pools due to the cost of compliance.
Fortunately sanity won that battle.7 -
Re:OP
The question is phrased wrong.
What you are really asking is "should restaurants be forced to accommodate all possible body shapes and sizes?"
The answer to that is quite obvious.
NO.
But that's not the question, and neither (despite some misreading) is "should restaurants be forced to accommodate fat people"? No one has suggested that they should.
Anytime anyone asks "should X business do Y" the implication is always "should there be a gov't mandate." Why? Because that is always what follows.
Not here, and no one took that position. People have consistently said that restaurants should do what makes sense for them. The person in the article created an app, which seems like a good solution.
I think janejellyroll made a comparison with restaurants offering vegetarian and vegan dishes, and that seems like a good comparison to me. Should they offer such dishes? Where I live it would likely be good for business and not particularly difficult, so I think it would make sense for them to do so, but would I "mandate" that they be required to? Of course not. I think it's great when they do, and I think the existence of apps to tell me what restaurants in a particular area do have them is helpful and a smart idea.Advocates for the handicapped lobbied Holder's DOJ to reinterpret the ADA to mean that all public pools MUST have both ramp entrance AND a fixed lift arm.
No one in the article or this conversation is saying fat people being uncomfortable violates the ADA, so strawman.9 -
Re:OP
The question is phrased wrong.
What you are really asking is "should restaurants be forced to accommodate all possible body shapes and sizes?"
The answer to that is quite obvious.
NO.
My wife is tall with long legs. The typical restaurant chair has a seat bed that is too shallow for her to sit comfortably. But a seat with deep seat bed will be uncomfortable for someone 5'5".
The typical restaurant chair requires little people to face the indignity of asking for a child booster seat.
If a lawyer sues on behalf of overweight people and wins it is impossible to believe that every other group who feels left out is not going to sue for mandated accommodation and financial damages.
The cost of compliance won't stop special interests from lobbying for mandates.
Any such mandate would result in seated restaurants becoming private clubs or eliminating seating entirely.
Did you read the article? That's really not the question at all.6 -
Fifty years ago for me, we had our own chickens, grew and canned vegetables, drank well water, washed clothes with water from the cistern, etc.
Heck, I made money growing and selling pumpkins and watermelon. I worked in the school cafeteria because I'd rather work for my meal than take a free/reduced price lunch. (Probably doesn't happen today.)
We bought bread, dairy and other meats. We ate a lot of what we grew.
Times are different today, that is for sure.tbright1965 wrote: »A century ago, people couldn't imagine the average family having so much food that obesity would be common.
We've always had the obese, but as a smaller percentage of the population.
Probably couldn't imagine the average Joe or Jane working in an office and having to find ways to exercise if they wanted to.Bry_Fitness70 wrote: »Nobody 50 years ago would have ever believed that in the future people would overeat to the extent that we actually need to re-engineer our common areas to physically accommodate them.
I can only speak for my line.
My subsistence farming grandparents (1920s) could only dream of times when they didn't need to scrabble every minute to cook, hunt, tend livestock, preserve food and more so that their 9 kids would make it through the Winter with enough to eat. Sometimes they were down to mostly dry beans and squirrels/rabbits they could shoot, until the eggs, milk and produce picked up in Spring.
It would have been pure fantasy to them to think that not only would their adult grandchildren not have to work themselves skinny from dawn to dark as they were doing, but that those folks' children would just play and go to school all day, rather than being sent out to work the barn and fields - often others' fields, for scant money for the household - from perhaps age 5 on. (My dad routinely picked cucumbers for pay at age 5, because cucumbers grow low; carried water home in the biggest kettle he could hold, from 1/4 mile away every day, alongside older sibs with buckets, until they got their own well and hand-pump.)
So, yeah, my grandparents "never would have believed that in the future people would overeat to the extent that we actually need to re-engineer our common areas to physically accommodate them."
But it's not so clear to me that they would've been appalled. It's at least as likely that they would've thought their descendants had been transported to some magical annex of heaven.
Fifty years ago - your stated time horizon - was my adolescence, my parents' time. They might have been surprised in a different way by our present times and attitudes compared to their parents, shaking their heads ruefully, bemused at so many of us wallowing (literally) in plenty, complaining about our "victimhood" and other people's "sense of entitlement", at our wasteful and fruitless self-soothing and self-seeking in a world (and sometimes country) of refugees, poverty, and varied horrors. But by then, 1969s/70s, quite a few people were fat, including some of my line. No one made much of a thing about it.
Re-engineering common areas to accommodate difference (earned or accidental) is a massive luxury, in historical terms and global terms. How should we react? Gratitude, and charity outside our tiny, fortunate circle, might be a good start. Decrying others' obesity, or others' desire for accommodation,in that context, might just be another form of self-absorbed tail-chasing.
Or not. :drinker:
4 -
Another Olde Farte checking in:
I'm now 65. When I was a kid, we barely scraped by.
In hindsight, it still amazes me what my mom could do with so little to spend on groceries. One of our mainstay dinners was a homemade beef/veggie soup.
In those days, butchers would give away beef bones for free. My mom would use them to make the broth, and the beef came from whatever little bits had been clinging to the bones. She added fresh or frozen veggies, seasoning, some noodles for substance and, voila - dinner.
It wasn't fancy, but it was cheap, nutrious, and pretty darned tasty!
5 -
HeliumIsNoble wrote: »@lemurcat12 Regarding woos, I see someone's just woo'd me for my opinion on today's events in UK politics, so...
I got a couple too. I'm collecting them lol.
Is it too much to ask that the "wooer" voice their opinion as well? You know, debate forum and all...
It's also fairly easy to accidentally woo or hug a post while scrolling on your phone. The forums can run a little slow on my phone and in a desperate attempt to get my page to scroll I find myself wooing or hugging posts sometimes. I usually catch them, but I'm sure some people who post a lot have gotten some random woos or hugs from me.
I'd love either from you!
1 -
rheddmobile wrote: »HeliumIsNoble wrote: »Anyway, on topic. Let's play a game of things that could be done by our more local elected officials (but probably won't be) to make it easier for people to achieve calorie balance without trying. Proposals will reflect our own observations, for obvious reasons, and they won't be universal problems.
When new suburban residential developments are proposed, the following questions should be asked in planning:
1) could fit healthy adult residents of the houses typically get to a local school, supermarket and doctors' surgery within less than 20 minutes' walk?
2) Would typical journeys to any of the above be safely walkable along routes that a sensible responsible adult would be willing to walk down with a young child on a tricycle?
If the answer to either of these is no, the residents will find it much easier to drive, and we know what a sedentary lifestyle can do for your weight, don't we? It can be fixed by making housing developers obliged to construct these amenities on the housing development they're building. It should not be acceptable for developers to build and sell a couple of thousand family houses, and then build a local school a couple of years later.
If you haven't guessed, this happened locally. In the meantime, the streets were gridlocked elsewhere in town, because the kids had to go to school somewhere, that definitely wasn't within walking distance. At least, it wasn't walkable if their parents were to have any hope of getting to work on time!
I often see people posting that you don't need an expensive gym membership to get fit, just a pair of trainers, which brings me to another matter.
Going jogging is cheap yeah, but if you were a petite woman who wanted to go jogging to get fit, would you feel safe running around your local area in the evening after getting home from work? This one is only partially a planning issue. You need well-lit routes; basically the opposite of a set of deserted alleyways, but we also need to come down hard on boneheads who think it's funny to shout mocking epithets at people out jogging or cycling. If Jane Smith experiences people making intimidating comments to her from their cars, she probably won't be going jogging again.
Safety is definitely a factor when running where I live. I’m a woman, but I don’t run my neighborhood even with my husband. We’ve been shot at twice and seen guns used several times while running here, and only last week two people were shot by someone firing through the glass door into their apartment, on the street we used to run down. As a result we get into the car and drive fifteen minutes to half an hour, to get to a park where it’s safer to run.
@rheddmobile you must live near my wife and I. I wish I were joking. We leave the area for long walks and such. And it is absolutely unsafe for any woman to go alone.
Wow.
I run around my neighborhood perfectly safely all the time, including in the morning before sunrise -- I love being out running when the sun comes up. I live in Chicago (murder capital of the US, apparently), but the crime in Chicago is generally in specific areas, not where I live.
Ditto--early morning, later at night. I pay ridiculously high rent (will likely never be able to afford to buy a house here), and I live in an incredibly safe area. Plenty of hiking, biking, beach year-round. I'll take it. I carry pepper spray, but it's honestly more for the coyotes than the humans.1 -
HeliumIsNoble wrote: »@lemurcat12 Regarding woos, I see someone's just woo'd me for my opinion on today's events in UK politics, so...
I got a couple too. I'm collecting them lol.
Is it too much to ask that the "wooer" voice their opinion as well? You know, debate forum and all...
It's also fairly easy to accidentally woo or hug a post while scrolling on your phone. The forums can run a little slow on my phone and in a desperate attempt to get my page to scroll I find myself wooing or hugging posts sometimes. I usually catch them, but I'm sure some people who post a lot have gotten some random woos or hugs from me.
I'd love either from you!
Done 2 -
Wow that was a difficult read. I'm sure I don't have anything to add that hasn't already been said but that article, wow.0
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