Fat People Cause Global Warming, Higher Food Prices

Stating the obvious: "Two scientists write that obese people are disproportionately responsible for high food prices and greenhouse gas emissions because they consume 18% more food energy due to their greater body mass -- and require increased quantities of fuel to transport themselves and the food they eat. 'Promotion of a normal distribution of BMI would reduce the global demand for, and thus the price of, food,' write the authors, Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts of the evocatively named London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine."

Or, maybe, they should worry about themselves

[OMNIpotusCOM]

I wonder how many greenhouse gasses were released in the creation of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the webhosting of the LA Times (let alone creation and physical distribution of the papers), or why they accepted 2 million dollars [wikipedia.org] from the Rockefeller foundation [wikipedia.org]. We all know that John D Rockefeller [wikipedia.org] was very green while he was revolutionizing the petroleum industry and founding Standard Oil. Maybe while the school looks...

To contribute to the improvement of health worldwide through the pursuit of excellence in research, postgraduate teaching and advanced training in national and international public health and tropical medicine, and through informing policy and practice in these areas.

...they should remember where they came from and why they have the buildings they do. Instead of spouting nonsense that will make less people want to visit, they should actually work on something that matters.

Why are peopel tip toeing around this story?

[pembo13]

Seems logical that obese people are disproportionately using up some resources. In the same way that professional racers are disproportionately using up carbon based fuels. I have seen really fat person it, and as a fatty myself, some scare me. But back to the story, seems like a logical corolation to me, very few obese people are fat and not eating much food.

Re:Mixed Causes

[GregPK]

I agree with you. I've got a large build with a low body fat. Viking build I guess, anyways I fit into 36 inch pants comfortably. I'm 6 foot 2 and my weight is still down 25 lbs from high school body building days leaving me at 245 lbs. I'm considered obese in the eyes of the insurance companies even though I have a six pack for muscle. I have to go through this long ass appeal process and physical in order to prove how lean I am every year.

OK, I'm going to weigh in here

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a fat man. I weight 370 pounds. (However, I am 6" 6' tall, but I'm still fat.) Now, this article does state that there are other factors. It names the skinny guy with the high metabolism on the 100 mile bike ride, but there is one factor (among many) that it doesn't consider. I live in a small apartment and drive a Honda Civic that gets 25MPG or better, even around town. (It gets 33 - 35MPG on the highway. All these fuel consumption figures are real measured figures that I've taken.) Lets look at my overall carbon output compared to the little 90 pound skinny woman driving her Chevy Suburban aggressively on her way home to her massive suburban McMansion, while talking on her cell phone no less. What's her carbon impact versus mine? How much more oil does it take to propel her massive SUV, especially when she's stomping on the gas with that big V8, then it does to propel my little 4 cylinder Civic? How much more oil does it take to heat and cool her massive house than my little apartment? I'd bet that we come out about the same, or that she might even end up producing more carbon than I do. There are so many factors that this article doesn't consider. All it really seems to do is give people an escape goat for global warming. Yes its all OK now, we can blame it on the fat people!

I for one welcome our obsese overlords

[strathconaman]

The obese only consume more until they are in their mid 50's [plosjournals.org]. After their deaths the thin and healthy live longer lives but and consume more than fat people over their lifespan.

I used to condemn fat people for their over use of pretty much everything. Now I relish crowds of fat people, especially people my age, as I know their early deaths will result in fewer people fighting for scarce resources in the future!

Eat up!

(Ok, I know it may be possible that what we are really talking about here is utilization rates of resources, and not total usage per person, but this is just a Slashdot post, give me a break!)

Just to play devil's advocate here ...

[NotBornYesterday]

... what about all the trim, muscular, athletic people? Think about it. If some guy runs, bikes, or goes to the gym a hour per day and lifts weights, isn't he eating more food, burning a lot more calories, and exhaling a lot more CO2 than a lazy s.o.b. sitting on his couch in a semi-vegetative state?

When you see a really obese person, don't think of them as 'fat'. Think of them as mobile carbon sequestration units.

Not all skinny people are worth feeding.

[Anonymous Coward]

The study assumes that all people are equally worthy of consuming food. The retards who did the study for instance, clearly are of very little benefit to society; and yet they are eating at least as much food as people who do good in this world.

It is also interesting that the study completely ignores flatulence. While some might guess that we of the wider persuasion give off more green house gasses, my experience suggests that the skinny little imps with high metabolisms are far more guilty in this regard.

on the other side of BULL-Pies(mmmmm, pies)

[CheshireDragon]

Their study had to be that of super morbidly obese people. Quite possibly the by people who can't even fit into cars and/or live with a relative or they'd otherwise die of starvation after a few months. I am one of those Jared story people. No, I didn't start eating Subway. I just stared getting away from soda, fast food, etc. and started making my own stuff or choose tea/water over soda. Oh and we can't forget about good ole exercise. ANYWAY, in the last few years I have lost 120LBS and in about 20-30 more LBS I'll be at my height weight ratio of 150-160LBS. Now for my point: At 300LBS I was still getting the same gas mileage in my truck(use the trip meter for tanks of gas to track usage). My trip meter always reads around 290-310mi per tank. Even at 180LBS I am still getting those same readings. My food bill has not changed. Infact it has gone down quite a bit because I am not buying 2-liter sodas at 1.80$, I am getting 1/Gal water jugs for 59 and since there are about 4-liters/Gal, they last twice as long. I wont keep on about how BS this research is. I challenge any of you HUSKY fellows to loose some weight and call BS on this article. I did and I call BS!

Not 'Fat People', Just 'People'

[Anonymous Coward]

Fatties are likely helping to keep global warming and food prices DOWN.. No energy to breed.

The planets population has ballooned from 1 billion a couple of hundred years ago, to 2 billion 70 years ago. From then it's jumped to 3 billion in the 60's, 4 billion in '74, 5 billion in '88, and 6 billion in 2000.

It's expected to reach 9 billion by 2050; so in the next 40 years we need to find more space to grow crops/cattle to feed 50% more people than we do now.

All this while populations take up more space with housing, and land mass decreases as tides rise. Hopefully everyone here likes fish?

About time things were made a bit tougher for people wanting to start families? With the number of badly treat kids in the world, we could do with a few less anyway. Being an unmarried male not interested in having kids, I get a bit sick of funding people going on maternity leave, or paying tax towards benefits for people to bring up their tribes of offspring.

Can we not stop picking on fatties, and instead direct scorn to those proud they've figured out intercourse?

Re:Mixed Causes

[Original Replica]

the study itself has some serious flaws.

When I'm training for a triathlon, I eat twice as much as anyone else I know. Added to that, the food I eat is more labor intensive than junk food, fresh organic stuff uses more resources per calorie than McDonald's and Hostess. A society of athletes would consume more food/resources than the couch potato society. Although there would be far fewer cars and many more bicycles.

Re:Mixed Causes

[jonbryce]

Another measure they use it to see if your waist is less than half of your height. If it is, then you are fine. If it is more than half your height, you are too fat.

Re:Not all fat people eat more.

[Animats]

And do you know the current eating habits of any of those oinkers?

I get a good idea when I'm stuck behind one at the supermarket checkout.

Re:And on the plus side. of plus-size..

[jguthrie]

You know, if "diet and exercise" had to pass the usual FDA tests before it could be prescribed as a treatment for obesity, it would fail to be approved due to lack of efficacy because it only works about five percent of the time.

Re:on the other side of BULL-Pies(mmmmm, pies)

[Pitr]

Not that I agree 100% with the article (I agree partially, but in a limited, and less sensationalized way), but you kinda missed, and proved, their point. It's not transporting your weight that they refer to in fuel savings, but the transport of the extra food you would have eaten, and you say you spend less on food by not buying certain things, which means that those things don't need to be transported, etc. It makes a more obvious difference if you think of it in terms of how much less a specific store would need per shipment, or how many fewer shipments they would require if hundreds of people stopped drinking soda, or consumed less in general, or whatever. Then imagine that nationwide. It would definitely make a difference.

Basically, there is a significant translation between over eating (Regardless of how heavy you are. You may have a fast metabolism an just eat more than you need.) and food/fuel consumption. It's an extension of out of control consumerism, which is certainly not limited to fat people. In fact I'm pretty sure fat people (to some extent) are as much or more a result of said consumerism as they are a specific contributor.

There's recently been a big push to "eat locally" which basically refers to watching how far the food you eat travels from production to your kitchen, and trying to keep it under 100km, which would save a lot of time, money, and energy, as well as help support and sustain local farmers and other food related industries. It involves less finger pointing, but it nicely illustrates just how much can be conserved by watching where we eat, and we could be affected similarly by how much we eat.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:I normally don't respond to crap like this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude,

Similar story: normal size person to middle aged night shift fat-ass story. For me, the fix was as simple as this: I got my sleep apnea under control. Go deal with the damn sleep study and get the doctor to write you a prescription for the overpriced box and Darth-Vader mask. The health effects will be felt immediately in the form of not waking up in the morning with bruises from your wife kicking you and telling you to 'roll-over' for snoring in her ear.

I lost 22 pounds in six months after getting on a CPAP machine. I literally felt like a new person the day after I started to use the thing. Probably part of the weight loss was due to extra energy and doing a little bit more, but it seems like my body is using food differently now--I have significantly changed my food intake because I have ZERO interest for foods with high fructose death syrup in it. (Which is just about everything so I don't eat a lot of packaged foods or foods from chain restaurants anymore.)

I'm still a pretty big fat-ass at 5'11" and 220 pounds, but it's getting better and I do not feel like hitting the candy machine at mid shift to keep awake. Coffee consumption is down some (though still significant.) I do very much miss the old cane-sugar based Coke-a-Cola in a glass bottle and still put a pretty good hurt on a platter of fried chicken, so it's not like I'm a health nut or anything now.

I think every fat fucker out there that pulls the tired old 'fat-gene' chestnut out for recital knows this is 100% bullshit excuse in their clogged heart. Fact is, they just need to get the courage and determine to step outside of their comfort zone long enough to find out what's fucking them up. Oh Christ, that sounded like some bullshit off of daytime TV. Sorry.

Look: Sure, being a fat-ass IS a hormonal problem--so is depression and anorexia. It CAN be changed once you get the energy to fix it. Even the lowest of low, low-energy depressed "I'm going to end it all because there is no hope" mental state can get you into the car and to a MD to help change those whacked-out hormones. The imbalance is probably a direct result of ultra processed Big-Agri USA anyway--or your parents or internet porn or whatever. In the end it does not matter since the person affected has to find a way to cope with the problem.

If you're already on a breathing mask and it's not helping, well--all I can say is lay off the 3am run to the candy machine at work and get on some modafinil (I ended up not needing it or any of the other happy pills they initially offered--but they are there and I know people who seem to have been helped in getting their shit together by using them for a while.)

Sorry again for the stupid speech, it's just that the whole point I was making is that I was literally killing myself every night with carbon dioxide build up--more than I knew. The excessive fat, the depression, the lack of energy--it was all due to the sleep apnea. I don't care if this bores the crap out of the two skinny people reading this. Perhaps some of the rest of you will read this and at least consider getting your night time breathing checked out and it will help you in loosing some weight.

Let's face it, if all you fat fuckers don't start getting females to breed with you, our numbers will dwindle to nothing in only a few generations. This is the future of humanity here folks. In case you have not noticed, it's already hard to find a good Dungeons and Dragons game these days.

Re:OK, I'm going to weigh in here

[Al Dimond]

"Why can't I just have my simple pleasures?", you ask. Because they aren't simple. Most stuff we do, the things we grew up with and took for granted, consume tons of energy. Our lifestyles affect lots of people. The fact that you enjoy steaks and burgers doesn't change the fact that meat takes a lot of energy to produce. So why shouldn't that be reported if it's true? Similarly, my computer uses lots of energy and I'm severely missing the point if I call someone that points that out to me an eco-Nazi. It's simply a fact, and something to take into consideration when I make choices about computer usage, I guess. Hard to be perfect.

It certainly is poor form, and stupid, to blame obese people for global warming for consuming marginally more resources. If all the obese people lost weight by decreasing consumption that could (this is maybe some but not all), we'd be very slightly less fucked (but still very much fucked) on food and energy costs. Trying to point the finger at someone instead of understanding that the mainstream western lifestyle simply requires tons of energy misses the point even more than calling people eco-Nazis for stating facts. It's the same type of reasoning that makes people in America worry about what will happen to the environment when people in India get cheap cars.

Re:Not all fat people eat more.

[Anonymous Coward]

I run about 50km and bike between 200 to 300km a week. I eat on average 3000 to 3500 calories per day. Certainly less than the average obese.

Here's the scoop : obese people also have very big muscles. I know I couldn't walk around with 150 lbs on my shoulders for more than 30 minutes, yet an obese can do it without much problem. They do it all they long. So guess what, obese people need more energy because of their muscles.

Oh, and obesity is mostly a mental illness, mainly the consequence of being over-stressed. Food is a way to relieve stress.

Re:Corn

[pragma_x]

Clutch your bag of cane sugar tightly, my friend. For last week I saw the next wave approaching on a powdered juice mix container:

Crystallized HFCS

So there you have it: absolutely nothing the mighty cane can do can be done for cheaper, and at a higher cost for your health, than HFCS. Yuck.

Follow-Up Study

[brianerst]

It's seems like just yesterday that my woefully neglected little blog [blogspot.com] was mocking Sheldon Jacobson of UIUC for "discovering" the same thing. My, how 18 months flies by...

In that blog post [blogspot.com], I suggested some follow-up research:

We here at Duh!scoveries don't merely want to mock these studies - we long to contribute too. So, we're suggesting a follow-up study. Gasoline in cars and trucks isn't the only excess fuel being burned here - the same physics indicate that fat people themselves require more fuel (in the form of tasty fried foods and soft drinks filled with high-fructose corn syrup) to move their own excess weight. And now that more and more vehicles are being fueled with biodiesel from soybean oil and ethanol from corn, there is now a competition for those resources between the fat people needing cheap calories to be able to move their enormous bodies and the SUVs they need to buy in order to haul their enormous bodies to the local fried-food emporium.

All of which raises the question: what is the optimum number of huge biodiesel or ethanol SUVs? Build too many and fat people will start slimming down due to lack of caloric input diverted to biofuel production, which leads to fewer SUVs needed to haul their now-slender bodies, which allows those fuel stocks to be retargeted to food. A vicious cycle, so we need to figure out just how many Hummers are needed to keep Americans optimally fat (or, we suppose, fit).

I guess it takes a while to get the grants...

Re:And on the plus side. of plus-size..

[WCLPeter]

A restaurant or bar, tho...is a private establishment. It is owned and run by a private citizen....and they should have the say whether they allow smoking, or chewing tobacco or what ever there as long as it is a legal activity. You have the choice to patronize or work there...no one forces you to go there and there is no reason you ever HAVE to go in there other than free choice.

I'm sure the person who makes deliveries, or provides other needed services to the business, would disagree with you. These people don't get much say in the matter; the smoke filled restaurant is on their route and they have to go into it. Or are you going to tell them they don't have the right to a safe work environment and that they should all quit their jobs?

As a society we have recognized that providing a safe working environment is in the bests interests of everyone. To accomplish this, there are numerous work and public safety standards mandated by the government that all appropriately licensed "private establishments" must follow. This includes the careful handling, or elimination, of harmful substances in the workplace.

Second hand smoke, a proven carcinogen, is yet another harmful substance that is now finally being regulated.

Ban junk food now

[Cannelloni]

That's right: ban it. Maybe it's time for government intervention. I am slightly overweight myself and I hate it. Flabby fat is so unattractive and also bad for your heart, causes diabetes etc. I have no idea how to go about losing weight, but I have at least started doing something about it: 1) NO bread, very little pasta and NO French fries. 2) I bicycle to work every day excerpt if it's much too cold or if there there is a heavy rain. That's a start, but not nearly enough. The next step, I think, is to learn about how to live a healthy life. If you live in the west, have a car and a comfortable life, you are liable to become fat, complacent and lazy, and it's time to break that habit.

Re:And on the plus side. of plus-size..

[Opportunist]

Smoking is a enjoyable and relaxing habit. I have been a smoker for a few years now. I'm doing ok with it, and non-smokers don't really bother me.

In my home country, smoking is allowed in most public places, and it's great. Feel free to avoid smoke in the comfort of your home, or your car, or even by changing the sides on the walkways. But you have to be pretty arrogant and selfish to think you have any right to tell someone where he may light a fire and smoke.

Smoking should not be a requirement and non-smoking should not be subject to additional taxes. ...

And so on. I'm not trying to turn it into a mockery. What I wanted to illustrate is that the same argument works in reverse just as well. How does one group have the right to tell the other group how and where to be? It is possible to avoid smoke if you don't want to be subjected to it, just as much as it is possible to avoid subjecting people to smoke if they don't want it near them. And no, neither is "easier", neither for the non-smokers to avoid smoke nor for the smokers to avoid subjecting non-smokers to it. Just as easy as saying "just smoke at home and in your car but not in public" can be turned around as "just don't smoke in your home and car and allow the smokers to do it in public". Any argument works for both groups.

It's a matter of tolerance, for crying out loud. I'm a smoker. I don't smoke in restaurants, because people want to eat there, and I do understand that people want to enjoy their meal without the flavor of tobacco. It's a place where your nose and tongue goes to work, and stale smoke can definitly ruin that experience. I don't smoke on public transportation, because it's near impossible to avoid blowing smoke into someone else's face, and that is just outright rude.

It's a matter of consideration.

I do enjoy a cigarette or a cigar with my beer and cognac. At night, in a bar, with a few friends, preferably in a quiet area where you can have a fruitful (or boozefilled, depending on circumstances, friends and topic) conversation. Most bars here offer a smoker and non-smoker area, so you don't have to sit in my quiet corner where I enjoy watching the patrons through the swirls of smoke.

Consideration and tolerance are nothing that can be enforced, though. It has to be something coming from yourself. If you are forced to tolerate something, it becomes something you endure rather than tolerate it. And you start to hate it. And the whole matter is now filled with so much hate that either group, smokers and antismokers, literally enjoys seeing anything happening that pisses the other group off, whether they gain anything out of it or not.

Re:Corn

[MightyYar]

As I said, processed food is going to be a problem because it tends to be full of crap you wouldn't put in food yourself... including sweeteners like corn syrup. Take a look at a jar of average pasta sauce sometime - no recipe ever calls for corn syrup, yet it tends to be Prego or Ragu's main ingredient.

In this case, both cake and salad were made by my crazy vegetarian organic friend - I'd stake my life on there being no corn syrup :)

Re:And on the plus side. of plus-size..

[MidnightBrewer]

Damn, it's not just me who thinks his metabolism started slowing down at thirty? :P Like I said, where I live promotes a certain built-in exercise necessity, but it's not as easy as it used to be to lose weight, so I exercise. That, and Japan's large at McDonald's is the small size in America, which helps. What can I say? I like it.

Thanks for the kudos. I sincerely wish everyone the best in overcoming this current cultural sickness, but it doesn't help if we don't call a spade a spade.

Re:Corn

[FiloEleven]

It would be fantastic if a few companies (Coca-Cola, for example) who regularly use HFCS in their products could be convinced to start a "premium" line that uses real sugar. They would have to charge a little more due to the bullshit sugar tariffs, but they could also advertise better taste and better health.

Get enough companies to do this, and they could run ads saying, "Hey, you know that Coke Premium that tastes a little better than regular Coke? The only reason it's more expensive is because we have to pay sugar tariffs. We have to pay those because the US gov't decided that the income of corn-growing farmers is more important than your health. If you want cheaper Coke Premium and a whole range of healthier foods using natural sugar instead of HFCS, go to www.fuckHFCS.com to see how you can help make your gov't work for you again."

There could be something obvious I'm missing, but it looks like a win-win situation. The people are happy because their food tastes better, the companies involved are happy because they'll see increased revenues due to better-tasting food plus a ton of goodwill that they are perceived as looking out for the consumer.

Re:BMI is medically dangerous quackery

[Bazouel]

About muscular people tipping the scale, I don't know about your city, but I don't see too many 6-packs running around in mine. So even if your argument is somewhat valid, it hardly justifies anything. For "standard build" people, BMI is pretty spot on. At 5'7", I would need to weight 190 lbs to be considered obese. That's not obese, that's just plain morbid.

Anyway, there are specialised BMI. See it for yourself if you really have an athletic build:

http://www.askdocweb.com/bmi4lean.html [askdocweb.com]

Re:Corn

[sbillard]

Jones soda is brand that has recently gone national. They use sugar instead of HFCS to sweeten their beverages. They make soda, juice, tea, an energy drink and a vitamin-enhanced water drink with just a little sugar (24c).
About this time last year, I had some homemade root beer, made with sugar. I was the BEST soda I ever had. Since then, I've found Jones. Never knew what I was missing. I'll never drink HFCS sweetened soda again.

Jones also offer sugar free soda with sucralose (Splenda) instead of aspartame (Nutrasweet). Taste much better than the major brand diet sodas.

I've heard that Hansens offers soda made with sugar, but haven't seen it myself. Try a sugar sweetened soda. I think you'll like it.

If you're prone to conspiracy theories, google Donald Rumsfeld's involvement in the engineering of HFCS and aspartame. Combine that with his comments about "Transformation" along with his "Leo Strauss" world-view and you've got a doozy.
Have the neocons poisoned America? Have they made us fat, lazy, and complacent, so they could take over the country, and then proceed to take over other countries?[/rant]

Re:Corn

[Cally]

For bread, I can't recommend highly enough getting your own breadmaker. When I was a kid we were pretty poor, to the extent that Mum was doing home-mad bread not for some health tip or to expany her culinary skillz, but to save 5p on the cost of a processed white loaf of "New Chorleywood Method" cereals-based mush cube - the stuff that dissolves into wallpaper paste if you leave it in a bowl of water for 5 mins... er where was I. Anyway back in the 70s it was a terrible, slow process, with vigorous exertion to kneed the dough, and produced an incredibly stodgy lump that was high in fibre, and substantial enough to substitute for bricks in non load-bearing walls. Now she has a cheap electric breadmaker; she picks a recipe for the day from the dozens and dozens in the manual, pours in measured quantities of flour, water, salt, fat and yeast, sets the timer and the loaf number. At 3am it kicks off, three hours later the wonderful smell of new-baked bread fills the kitchen, sun streams thru the window, fresh coffee brewing, birds singing... it's like a life insurance ad, or a bad property development programme on telly. The only problem is that after you've taken the freshly baked loaf out and rinsed out the removable tin, it pipes up with "Howdy doodly-doo! Can I interest you in a muffin? teacake? buns? baps? baguettes? bagels? croissants? crumpets? pancakes? potato cakes? hot cross buns? No?

...so, you're a waffle man!

Actually, the bread it produces is absolutely delicious, when given decent wholemeal flour and some malty bits and cracked grains. Add some nice lightly salted butter and home-made marmalade from proper seville oranges,cane sugar and a drop of lemon juice to set, follow with a decent filter coffee and a fag and I feel pretty damn bulletproof. Admittedly you can't actually move anywhere for 30-40 mins afterwards, but you can use that time to smile benevolently at the world and remind yourself how nice it is to be alive, sometimes.