Skepticlawyer

I read yesterday that Japanese law stipulates that the waistline must be below a certain diameter:

In Japan, being thin isn’t just the price you pay for fashion or social acceptance. It’s the law.

So before the fat police could throw her in pudgy purgatory, Miki Yabe, 39, a manager at a major transportation corporation, went on a crash diet. In the week before her company’s annual health check-up, Yabe ate 21 consecutive meals of vegetable soup and hit the gym for 30 minutes a day of running and swimming.

”It’s scary,” said Yabe, who is 160 centimetres tall and weighs 60 kilograms. ”I gained two kilos this year.”

In Japan, already the slimmest industrialised nation, people are fighting fat to ward off dreaded metabolic syndrome and comply with a government-imposed waistline standard.

Surely encouraging people to go on “crash diets” is not at all healthy either, and won’t lead to lasting weight loss. There are some things you just shouldn’t legislate against, and I think this is one of them. I’m just not a fan of the beat up over obesity. There are many different body sizes and shapes. I know some people who are naturally plump but actually fitter and more healthy than some skinny people. A person’s basic body shape comes down in part to genetics. It should also be acknowledged that some people have medical conditions which make obesity particularly difficult to manage (eg, PCOS) or disabilities which make it hard to exercise.

However, my first irreverent thought was there must be a rather, erm, sizeable exemption from this Japanese law…

From Daily Mail

Yes, sumo wrestlers.