Thinner is better to curb global warming, study says

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Thinner is better to curb global warming, study says

Story Highlights

  • Transporting heavier people requires more fuel, generating more greenhouse gas
  • Study compared BMI distribution in UK in 1970s with predictions for 2010
  • Governments should encourage active transportation, study author says

By Elizabeth Landau CNN (CNN) -- Here's yet another reason to stay in shape: Thinner people contribute less to global warming, according to a new study.

Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine published a study showing that, because of food production and transportation factors, a population of heavier people contributes more harmful gases to the planet than a population of thin people.

Given that it takes more energy to move heavier people, transportation of heavier people requires more fuel, which creates more greenhouse gas emissions, the authors write.

"The main message is staying thin. It's good for you, and it's good for the planet," said Phil Edwards, senior lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

The study offers this novel approach to the global warming problem as U.S. lawmakers discuss the future of climate change legislation. This week, the the House Energy and Commerce Committee is scheduled to begin on a comprehensive energy and climate bill. On Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that six greenhouse gases pose potential health hazards, an announcement that could prompt the regulation of the gases.

More than 1 billion adults worldwide are overweight, and about 300 million are obese, the study said. Generally, the body mass index, a measure of obesity, is increasing in most countries worldwide, from China to European countries to the United States.

BMI is going up because of the availability of food and motorized transportation, Edwards said. People are less active now than they were 30 years ago, and the prevalence of fast food has given people less healthy, more energy-dense options.

Using statistical models, the authors compared the distribution of BMI in the United Kingdom in the 1970s -- when 3.5 percent of the population was obese -- with a prediction for the country's BMI distribution in 2010, reflecting 40 percent obesity.

"In terms of environmental impact, the lean population has a much smaller carbon footprint," Edwards said.

The population with 40 percent obese people requires 19 percent more food energy for its total energy expenditure than the population with 3.5 percent obese people, the study showed.

This 19 percent increase in food consumption translates into an increase of

270 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, the study said.

"The findings make sense and highlight an important global co-benefit of losing weight, along with the significant personal health benefits," said Patrick Kinney, associate professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, who was not involved in the study.

In terms of obesity rate, the U.S. population is not far off from the overweight population model in this study. The country has 33.3 percent obese people, according to the Mayo Clinic.

The study suggests that governments have a responsibility to encourage people to be more physically active, Edwards said. Active transportation, such as cycling and walking, helps maintain a healthy weight but requires safe streets, he said.

"If the government wants to promote active transport, which would be good for the environment and for individual health, it needs to make the environment safe to do that," he said.

Although climate change has come into the forefront as a major world problem recently, this is not the first time scholars have thought about the connection between fossil fuel and body fat.

In 1978, a year the United States experienced an oil shock, a study in the American Journal of Public Health showed that if all overweight people in the country aged 18 to 79 reached their optimal weight, the resulting energy savings would equal 1.3 billion gallons of gasoline.

After the dieting period, about 750 million gallons of gasoline would be saved every year, said the authors, Bruce Hannon, professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and Timothy Lohman, now professor emeritus at the University of Arizona.

Today, research has shown that the obesity epidemic costs the United States about $100 billion a year, said Dr. Martin Donohoe of Portland State University, who runs the Web site Public Health and Social Justice. In terms of energy expenditure, the average food product travels 1,500 miles to get to your table, he said.

Some measures to curb obesity include making healthier meals available in schools, putting nutritional information on food packages and menus, and banning trans fats, he said.

Reply to
STP
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Fantastic! I'm glad I'm fat then. Global warming is a f****ng joke, and every earth day I burn my garbage just for kicks.

Reply to
The Master

Thinner? Paint Thinner? Will a car run on paint thinner? I am on a diet, I weigh 196 pounds now.I am trying to get my school boy figure back. cuhulin

Reply to
cuhulin

Me too, but I have a few pounds on you even.

Reply to
Hachiroku $B%O%A%m%/(B

You could drill and tap (thread) a little hole in your vehicle's ehaust manifold.Rig a line with a container of old used motor oil and an on/off valve you can controll from inside of your vehicle.Moonshiners used to do that when they were running from the revenoors.Makes a real good smoke screen.Perfect for Earth Day.It would work good on your lawn mower and weed trimmer too for fogging those West Nile mosquitos. cuhulin

Reply to
cuhulin

If humans are causing Earth to warm up, why is Mars warming up too? cuhulin

Reply to
cuhulin

If humans are causing Earth to warm up, why is Mars warming up too?

===========================================

Martians are getting too fat, and their Mars Rovers use extra fuel to haul them around, warming the Martian atmosphere. To stop the warming, Martial law has been declared and Martians are now prohibited from possessing Mars Bars.

Rodan.

Reply to
Rodan

DAMN! NOW HE TELLS ME!

Reply to
Hachiroku $B%O%A%m%/(B

Pollution is universal...

Reply to
Hachiroku $B%O%A%m%/(B

Now they're saying DRLs are adding to Global Warming...

Reply to
Hachiroku $B%O%A%m%/(B

Those Martians are expending too much energy wipeing the Martian dust off of the Rovers solar panels. I want me a Rovermobile.

On the web, Hijacking the Red Planet cuhulin

Reply to
cuhulin

Yes, I do. The variation in amount of sunlight due to the Milankovitch cycles is small, and the usual index of the Milankovitch cycles is how insolation varies at top of the atmosphere at the specific latitude of 65 degrees north. Only one of the Milankovitch cycles can affect global insolation - the eccentricity one. Meanwhile, I doubt that CO2 concentration stopped increasing at 387 ppmv

- it looks to me like it's going to go above 500. In the past decade, it has increased at a rate of about 20 ppmv per decade, and the increase will not slow down until fossil fuel consumption slows down.

(Excluding the low carb newsgroup from crossposting)

- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

Reply to
Don Klipstein

Great idea! Sounds like the perfect Earth Day treat, and is perfect for use when flooring the accelerator to zip past obnoxious holier-than-thou cyclists clogging up the road.

Reply to
Roger Blake

And Prius owners driving with "Priusfoot"...

Reply to
Hachiroku $B%O%A%m%/(B

Have a look at the chart I posted. It a cycle. Even 250PPM of CO2 isn't going to stop that.

I heard a report today that sun activity is at very low levels. Perhaps that's what causes the cooling to start. Algore be damned...

Milankovitch cycles are just a theory.

Reply to
Hachiroku $B%O%A%m%/(B

It's not about the science. Anyone with open eyes can see that there is no scientific 'consensus,' and can read the admissions of environmentalists who confess that they deliberately lie to foment political change. What it's really about is POWER (the political kind). The 'progressives' have been looking for decades for the issue that will permit them to take control of all aspects of individuals' lives. Controlling carbon is a politician's and bureaucrat's dream, as it means control of life itself. And just think of the revenue that can be generated!

Not even the smallest detail is being left unscrutinized, no stone left unturned by determined Warmists. In the land of fruit and nuts (California), as the state's economy continues to collapse the apparatchiks are busy pushing through regulations on what color cars are permitted to be sold there. (You see, those evil dark-colored vehicles require more air conditioning, needing more fuel - you know the rest!) The mind boggles.

There is absolutely no part of your life that dedicated leftists do not want to have complete control over, and 'global warming' is their means of getting there.

Reply to
Roger Blake

Why am I thinking of Henry Ford's comment, "You can have any color you want, so long as it's black".

Reply to
aMAZon

Backfires are Good.I used to own a 1962 Ford Falcon, six cylinder, manual shift.I replaced the engine with another six cylinder engine.It was about a week before I got around to hooking up the tail pipe and muffler.I would rev the engine a little bit and cut the ignition, POW!

Just like Onslow's car in Keeping Up Appearances. cuhulin

Reply to
cuhulin

There is no evidence Henry Ford ever made this statement. And for sure Model Ts were sold in a vareity of colors (see

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Regards,

Ed White

Reply to
C. E. White

The black Model T Ford cars had a final factory overspray deep purple paint color over the black paint.It didn't take long for the purple to fade to black. cuhulin

Reply to
cuhulin

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