Turkey has rolled out a nationwide scheme to stop and weigh people in public, with inspectors then telling them to slim down if they are found to be overwe*ght.
Health workers have been deployed across each of the country’s 81 regions with weighing scales and tape measures as the drive to assess 10 million people by July 10 is underway.
Passersby are stopped by medical examiners for spot body mass index (BMI) checks while walking through town squares, shopping centres and parks, and even as they prepare to board buses or head to football matches, according to reports.
Speaking at a nursing conference last week, Turkey’s Minister of Health Kemal Memişoğlu declared that ’50 percent of our society is overwe*ght.’
He pointed to the various health risks associated with being overwe*ght, telling the meeting: ‘Being overwe*ght means being sick, it means we will get sick in the future.
‘Our young children are overwe*ght, their body resistance is high and that’s why they don’t get sick, but when they start getting older, that weight will turn into joint and heart diseases.’
But Memişoğlu was not spared the scales in Ankara last week – and was told by health officials that he was among the large proportion of the population counted as ‘above normal weight’.
‘Which dietitian should I go to?’ he reportedly said afterwards, before adding in a follow-up post on Thursday: ‘Turns out I’m a little over. It’s up to me now, I’ll be walking every day.’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14735499/Overweight-publicly-weighed-slim-Turkey.html