Male patrons at a Chinese restaurant can watch their waistlines increase and the bill decrease. The Nao Huo eatery in Chongqing, southwest China, is offering “heavy” discounts to a particular clientele: fat men (skinny women pay less for being thin), according to Mirror Online. The promotions are based on customers’ sizes as an incentive to boost business revenue, but is the restaurant also taking part in body shaming?

"Na Huo restaurant cares about fat people and thin people. Bring your fat or thin friends, eat for free," wrote the restaurant on its Weibo social media page. First, the restaurant owners weigh their customers and then price their meals depending on how much they weigh, the China Radio International website reported. Male customers that weigh over 308 pounds will get their meal for free, whereas female customers will only receive a free meal if they weigh less than 76 pounds.

The restaurant’s gimmick may be humorous, but it treads a fine line between marketing strategy and body shaming. In China and the U.S., men's bodies and behavior don't receive as much shame as women do. A 2014 study published in the journal Basic and Applied Social Psychology found women are significantly more likely to experience guilt or shame by their physicians than men are, and are less likely to make positive changes in response. In other words, a woman who walks out of a doctor’s appointment thinking she's a “fat person” is less likely to make diet changes compared to a woman who thinks she “eats too much.”

In 2010, the Las Vegas restaurant “The Heart Attack Grill” celebrated obesity by offering free meals to both obese men and women patrons. If customers weigh themselves with a cattle scale at the restaurant and are over 350 pounds, they get a free meal, Medical Daily previously reported. The fat-shaming restaurant served up to 10,000-calorie burgers, but since then its owner has told people to stay away and eat more healthily.

Restaurants continue to offer customers incentives based on their body and overall physical appearance. A restaurant in Shanghai is rewarding customers based on height, where tall customers eat for less, according to Shanghaiist. This also hints at height shaming, where men more so than women are stigmatized because of their height.

Restaurants all across the world are starting to offer unusual incentives all revolving around body image for the sake of revenue. While they may only be temporary, they still demonstrate societal values, as superficial as they may be.