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Employers in Europe may soon have a duty to create reserved car parking spaces for obese staff, or adjust the office furniture for them as BBC reports that the European Court of Justice is considering a test case of a male nanny who says he was fired for being too fat - a ruling that could oblige employers to treat obesity as a disability. Employment expert Audrey Williams says the judges would have to decide "whether obesity itself should trigger preferential rights, or should only impact where an individual, due to obesity, has other recognized medical issues. Employers would have a duty to make reasonable adjustments to the workplace or working arrangements," says Williams. "This might include a review of where the employee is located and their seating arrangements, or even preferential access to car parking."
The US Equal Opportunity Commission already defines obesity as being a disability, under the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act. In a recent case involving morbid obesity, a Texan employee who weighed more than 680 pounds received $55,000 in compensation for being dismissed. In October 2009, the man was told to report to human resources where officials told him the company had reached the conclusion he could no longer "perform his job duties because of his weight and he was therefore terminated," the suit said. Ronald Kratz, who had gotten two promotions and high performance ratings over his 16-year-career, insists his weight did not interfere with his ability to perform his job duties as a parts sorter. Kratz, who lost over three hundred pounds since he was fired, has not been able to find another job despite sending out numerous applications, and his unemployment benefits have run out. "It has been really hard on the family."
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday June 16 2014, @03:16AM
In some places it's hard to find food outlets that server proper real food. And if colleagues drag you along to some junk food place. Good luck trying to get some decent in the first place. Bonus point for ducking the comments.
So forbid businesses that serve mostly junk to make any kind of advertising. And reserve good locations for better alternatives. Same for products. Remove their right to advertise in any way. Make laws that for every soft drink you need to offer two juices without any additives. And so on.
Public facilities that offer bars full of sugar and bad fats at late night through vending machines should enforce that the providers of such machines fill them with real food too. At minimum 50%.
And deal with environments that make people depressed so that food don't become a self medication. With reasonable work loads at school and work. And more stimulating environment than gray concrete with clinical removal of any grass and trees.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 16 2014, @03:40AM
"...offer two juices without any additives"
Ok, but in the US, fruit juices are essentially sugar water, a mere quarter step above Kool-Aid. I refuse to drink them for this reason and certainly wouldn't offer fruit 'juice' to kids if I had any.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday June 16 2014, @04:13AM
Really?
I read labels. In my fruit juice, there is fruit juice. Nothing more. Nothing less.
You need to shop more carefully ?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 16 2014, @04:32AM
"You need to shop more carefully ?"
You need to check your facts:
"Excess fruit juice consumption by preschool-aged children is associated with short stature and obesity."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8989331 [nih.gov]
"...according to researchers from the Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences at the University of Glasgow in Scotland,
...the high sugar content in fruit juice is just about equal to the amount of sugar that’s dumped in soda."
http://www.ivillage.com/study-finds-juice-and-soda-are-equal-sugar/4-a-562072 [ivillage.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 16 2014, @04:50AM
The claim was made that "in the US, fruit juices are essentially sugar water". This implied that juices elsewhere in the world are not so full of sugar. The poster you are replying to understandably thought that this was a reference to sugar being added to fruit juices, which is not uncommon here. Shopping carefully can generally avoid adulterated juices entirely.
(Score: 1) by q.kontinuum on Monday June 16 2014, @02:46PM
No, it does not. If I tell you that shit stinks in France, you might tell me that, surprisingly, it does in US as well. Nevertheless my first claim would hold true ;-)
That's a different claim; I agree this is likely. BTW: As far as I know, in most cases where juice is mixed with sugar, it is also mixed with water, essentially evening out to the same level of sweetness. Since Fructose [wikipedia.org] consumption is also problematic, the version with water and sugar might even be healthier. The main point should be:
If you are thirsty, drink water! Juice is food, high caloric food, with some vitamins.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 16 2014, @05:10AM
I think the point is that actual fruit juice made entirely from actual fruit is mostly sugar and water. Apple juice, per 100 grams, contains about 10 g sugar and 90 g water and less than a gram of everything else (fiber, vitamins, etc). If you are thirsty drink water.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 16 2014, @01:36PM
Most fruit juices are sugar in disguise. There are about 20-30 different ways they name sugar. Ever wonder why apple juice is in everything? It is sweet (because of the sugar) and most importantly cheap and has tons of natural sugar and easy to mask with other flavors. Something like pure cherry juice would be borderline bitter. Maraschino cherries are sweat because they soak them in corn syrup. So they start with 90% apple juice add in 8-9% grape juice then add in a couple of tea spoons of cherry or whatever 'flavor' they are looking to sell you.
Eating an apple is good. As the fiber is good for you and vitamins in the skin too. Drinking a glass of apple juice over a coke is debatable which is better (maybe the apple by a nano hair). A glass of apple cider would be better for you. But that is also usually considered bitter by people raised on sugar diets.
Look to sugar. That is where most people gain weight as your body easily turns it into fat storage. It is in everything from your bread to your drinks. Good rule of thumb stay out of the middle of the store and go down the edges. That is where the bulk of processed foods are. Processing usually means taking something cheap that tastes like paste and give it a good flavor and sell it for double or even triple for good margin.
If you think you are buying 'real' juices look again. You will see most of the time they are selling you apple juice blended with grape juice. A real litter of pomegranate would probably cost 15-20 bucks. There are basically 3 juices most people really buy, apple, grape, and orange. 99% of the remaining juices out there are blends with the good stuff burnt at the factory to run boilers. The 'good stuff' tastes like paste and people do not want to buy it.
A few go as far as to blend in a few teaspoons of processed sugars (usually one of the crystalline forms). To bump the sweetness. For example would you consider molasses to be sugar? It is 100% sugar. It is a byproduct of making sugar white and granular. Yet they do not have to call it sugar. They have fought long and hard to hide it from consumers.
It is why I am heavily invested stock wise in food processing groups. As people think they are eating healthy when in fact they are eating processed foods with sugar in it. The adkins fad a few years ago was the only one to actually put a scare into the food companies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 16 2014, @04:49PM
Maraschino cherries are sweat because they soak them in corn syrup.
Yeah, and pickles are bitter because they're soaked in vinegar. I fail to see the relevance of candied cherries to a discussion of proper fruit or fruit juices.
There's definitely a segment of the population who fail to make a distinction between sugar, the chemical present in all food, and sugar as a refined additive to foods. These people are prone to marketing ploys like "No added sugar" in honeyed, juiced, or agaved foods. Most of us would rather see comprehensible ingredients on our food than a mass spectrogram, and we know that sweet components like honey means a lot of simple carbohydrates, even if it's not labeled "sugar."
The reason orange, apple, and grape juices are popular is that those are naturally the sweetest juices. In fact, when most people say "juice" they mean one of those. I'd bet that if you just say "juice" to most people, they immediately think "orange juice."
This whole thread is an argument between people who know that fruits are primarily mono- and di-saccharides and think of fruit juice as sugarwater, and people who know that fruits are mostly mono- and di-saccharides and think that the food industry will add refined sugar to those juices to make them sell better.
(Score: 1) by q.kontinuum on Monday June 16 2014, @02:33PM
So, making obesity socially accepted will help you to duck comments from obese colleagues who try to drag you into their own miserable eating habits? I'm not against taxation of unhealthy food though.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday June 17 2014, @12:48AM
If you are fit and eat proper food. Then there's always people that just has to vent their opinion on that. Making obesity a normal state is not a good thing but people shouldn't be ostracized for it either.
The problem is usually that in a lunch restaurant you have to order what's available there. Or the people working there will ask you to leave. However you didn't want to go there in the first place..