Thanks to David Allison and his colleagues' weekly email summarizing the latest research on obesity, I ran across this policy proposal in the British Medical Journal from 1904. If you can't read the fine print, it says, in part, "A superfluity of fat, which is mostly the result of luxurious living, may therefore not unfairly be regarding as a fitting object of taxation." You're off the hook if you weigh less than 135 lbs.
