Are Fat People Destroying the Planet?
13 Comments | Written on June 20, 2012 at 2:00 pm, by The Editors
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Just about everyone knows that carrying around too much extra weight can contribute to a whole variety of health problems (heart disease, diabetes, etc.). But does being too fat contribute to, say, global warming as well?
Yes, according to Dr. Ian Roberts, a researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In a recent study, Roberts and his colleagues crunched the numbers: The earth’s 7 billion people collectively weigh in at an estimated 287 million tons; according to Roberts, that’s about 17 million tons too many. And not just for our own sake (really, Roberts doesn’t appear to be so interested in that), but for the planet’s.
“People always start thinking we’re damaging the earth’s ecosystem from our polluting activities, so [they ask] how many people can the earth support? And then immediately they start thinking about the number of people on the planet and how many mouths to feed,” Roberts tells NPR. “But the point of this paper is actually that food doesn’t feed mouths; it feeds flesh. So the really important question is not how many mouths there are but how much flesh there is.”
Not only does Roberts complain that all this talk about “how many mouths to feed” unfairly leads people to target, say, “poor women in Africa having too many babies,” he thinks all the hype about obesity is misleading, too. Yes, obesity rates are too high, but as he points out, much of the world is getting fatter, even if they’re not technically obese.
“Bigger people need more energy to move them; airplanes need more energy to get off the ground,” Roberts tells NPR. “It takes more shares of the earth’s resources to support all that weight.” (More food needs to be grown and transported; more gasoline consumed, etc.)
So what country is the worst culprit in hogging all those resources? No surprise given all the recent headlines about obesity: it’s the U.S, where the average adult is a full 50 pounds heavier that the global average. Overall, according to Roberts’s calculations, North America has just 6 percent of the world population but accounts for a third of the world’s obesity.
Or, as Roberts put it to the London Telegraph: “If every country becomes as fat as the U.S., then in mass terms it’s like having an extra billion people on the earth or feeding another half a billion.”
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13 Responses to “Are Fat People Destroying the Planet?”
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What the hell is the matter with these morons saying crap like that. the planet is nearly the csame weight now as it was a bilion years ago. A human is mostly water and other organic matter. Upon death the body breaks down back in to the planet, regardless ofhow big he or she is.
You people are the idiots, jeez! First off, they’re just trying to get you to read the article using that headline, and guess what? It worked! You probably wouldn’t have read it if it was “British Scientist Studies Correlation Between Population Weight and Environment.” Second, it’s not mean to call a spade a spade—fat people are fat! Being overweight is bad for your health. Different people may have different healthy weights, but being 50 or 75 or 100 pounds overweight is not healthy. Third, Candy (ironic name?), as a matter of fact you can “know” the weight of the world population: it’s call statistical sampling. Doesn’t everyone learn this in, like, high school?
No Ignorant People Are!!!
This article was hilarious!! It has to be a tongue-in-cheek tome by someone who has a great sense of humor! I laughed all the way through up to the very last line! Great
article, Guy’s. More! More!
This is the most idiotic statement I have ever read! I can’t believe people would buy into this. You are not an expert in this at all. To begin with, there is no way you can possibly know the weight of our population. And in response to that it is none of your business. All you do is waste money on these ignorant studies.
This has got to be the most ridiculous story I’ve seen in more than 50 years! Dr. Roberts expertise is in Tropical Medicine, not environmental issues; therefore he is no more an expert in this area than Tom Cruise is on baldness! I won’t be visiting your webpage again because of this trash! There are so many out there who bully others whose appearance is not like their own. This kind of story just fuels their sick minds. Emphasis on a persons size or appearance is the very thing we are trying to teach our kids not to buy in to. It is not the fat people in this world who are taking up too much important space. It is narrow minded bigots like Dr. Roberts, who speak with false knowledge!
I totally agree. What an idiot! Maybe the 50 extra pounds some have is balanced by the
to thinpeople of the world.
Why give this idiot the print space he is taking up.