EU's top court may define obesity as a disability

[Northerner]

The EU's top court is considering a test case which could oblige employers to treat obesity as a disability.

Denmark has asked the European Court of Justice to rule on the case of a male childminder who says he was sacked for being too fat.

Karsten Kaltoft weighs about 160kg (25 stone; 350 pounds). He told the BBC that "bad habits" had made him fat but that his size was "no problem" at work.

The court's final ruling will be binding across the EU.

It is seen as especially significant because of rising obesity levels in Europe and elsewhere, including the US. A survey in England in 2012 found that more than half of adults were obese or overweight.

The Danish courts asked the ECJ judges in Luxembourg to clarify European law in Mr Kaltoft's case.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-27809242

 

[trophywench]

I can see some sense, and have nothing against obese people personally, but I have to ask myself if people by their own admission only got obese by bad habits - why can't they lose weight by substituting better habits?

Browsing clothes shops with my eldest step-daughter last Friday - rare either of us get a chance to do this with another female these days! - I was lucky if most places had a size 12 on the racks at all and I find this very dispiriting.

I think they must sell out very quickly because there were odd size 6, 8 & 10, then plenty of size 16 and above - but for sizes 12 and 14 - very little choice in anything modern that I would wear. (Well size 14 swamps me and eg Florence & Fred or M&S I can easily get in a 10, and I'm well covered I assure everyone, very little juts out - I wish! LOL) and very young clothes can look silly on an old bird like me and so you have to be choosy about it.

I think it's a poor show frankly and that we are going to land up even more like America where there's hardly anyone you see whilst on holiday who are what I class as NORMAL sized - but only either stick thin or obese, often morbidly so.

I know I'm personally skinny built and not very tall, but just because someone is bigger than me skeletally and would therefore need to be commensurately covered with flesh (which can mean they would come up as overweight or worse) on a BMI scale then to my mind they would class as 'normal' - IYSWIM.

I think as long as this man can do his job, has sufficient energy to run after or with the kiddies, then why the need to sack him? I don't see the need to protect little ones from knowing there are fat people in the world cos there always have been and always will be - but they should be the exception - not the rule, as indeed should stick thin people, the disabled whether physically or mentally, the blind, deaf or dumb.

Otherwise medicine and society are both failures, aren't they?!

If he can't do his job because of his size, then dispensing with his services is correct.