Slashdot Mirror
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."
Weighing more makes us harder for the aliens to suck out of our cars, the reserves mean we'll last longer in the coming famine years, and if any skinny little vegans give us any lip, all we gotta do is sit on 'em to quash the noise...
Seriously, extreme obesity is a darwin rule in action, usually - nobody wants to breed with us, and heart disease/stroke usually kill us "early" - rather like gay marriage, if you don't like 'em, don't join 'em, otherwise, back off: It's hard enough living in a world that wasn't built for us without having some smug, self-righteous ass-hat making comments because, while normal, we don't fit average... only made the worse when it's people who want their particular outside-of-average needs respected who fail the tolerance test...
Take the 90-Day Challenge! http://rwmurker.bodybyvi.com/
Although it was quite funny, it's a straw man and the study itself has some serious flaws. Some people really do have serious glandular problems or diseases causing obesity. My cousin was a beautiful young woman until she developed lupus... she went from somewhere around 120 pounds to, well, I'm not going to speculate. I'm not sure what exactly caused the obesity, it could have been anything from hormonal changes to medications she had to take, but I know her house isn't exactly filled with twinkies. I feel terrible walking around with her in public. Not because I'm embarrassed to be with an obese woman, but because I get so upset at the looks people give us. People look at her like she just killed and ate their favorite pet, then they look at me with a slightly different look of disgust.
In addition, I feel that while this may be accurate, we'd be pushing the environmentalism too far to cite it as a reason for people to lose weight. Even if it would save some energy, fuel, and materials, all of the savings are overshadowed by the significant social and medical advantages. If we could waste just a little more food and fuel to ensure a longer life expectancy, we would.
Of course, this study isn't really very good. While the global demand for food would likely drop, you'd have a significant jump in energy and oil prices. All of the formerly obese Americans, spending hundreds less on food every month, would be ready to hit the beaches, ski slopes, etc. with their extra money and less embarrassing bodies.
Finally, BMI is a shoddy system that I'm sick of seeing. BMI was developed at a time when leeching was an accepted medical practice, and hasn't changed significantly since then. BMI can not differentiate between lean mass and lard. This means that a society of body builders would have the same average BMI as a society of, well, lazy Americans.
Getting back to serious topics, it's very important to note that global food shortages (and corresponding rises in prices) are not caused by increased demand. They're caused by reduced supply, which has been, in part, caused by food aid programs. When people become dependent on food aid programs, a small series of events can raise food prices enough that food aid programs can't afford to send food. You can imagine how well this works out for impoverished areas that have lost their indigenous food production capability.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
He's skinny... better mobility...
Does this mean I'm finally in a class that the government is going to throw money at?
Oh, and I plan to live 20% fewer years than average, so it's really a 2% gain for the planet.
-Peter
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.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Corn? Yes, Corn!
Michael Pollan will convince you, that this is no accident. You are eating nothing but corn - with a four-carbon configuration that is destroying your healt and nutrition, as it wrecks ecosystems in its cultivation.
Thanks, Cargill! Thanks, Mosanto! If Chevron-Texaco is Emperor Palpatine, these two are Darth Vader and Tarkin.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I'm not all pro-obesity or anything, but it's just silly to think that ALL obese people eat more than ALL average-weight people.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
There will always be skinny guys who like to fuck fat chicks, fat guys who are rich enough that skinny girls will fuck them, and fat guys who eventually give up on their dreams of banging supermodels and settle for a fat chick.
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!
"It's a glandular problem!" Yeah, sure
But as a "large" person, bite my flabby ass.
not speaking for every fatass. But since I started working nights 10 years ago i've gained 150lbs.
Funny thing is I'm still as active and eat basically the same amount that I always have.
I've been big since puberty set in.
In HS i was 5'9" and weighed 240lbs. As i was playing football at the time I don't think it was a lack of exercise. I don't know what my calorie intake was at the time but it couldn't have been that much since we weren't very well off but my dad made enough to keep us off welfare. Never any huge amount of junk food or fatty food. Mostly carbs though. beans, rice, pasta and chicken.
In my 20's i reached my present height of 6ft. I was working construction and living in Brooklyn. I ate and drank pretty much whatever I wanted then but never got above 190.
FF to my 40's and 10 years of night work, sleep apnea and other nonsense I weigh 340. I eat maybe 2 times a day. I don't really eat sweets. My diet is mostly the same it was when I was a kid though I drink a lot more.
spent about 3 months writing down my food intake for the doctor I'm working with.
He didn't see anything abnormal. I average about 1900 calories a day.
I should be losing weight but I'm not. Possibilities include sleep deprivation, thyroid problem or diabetes (which i still test negative for even though both parents have adult onset)
Sure there are people that don't control what they eat, don't exercise and are seriously fat in the way you describe.
But I think there a lot of folks that due to different circumstances just can't maintain weight the way you or other people think they should.
FWIW, my family of 6 has a food budget of 540 a month not including 160 budgeted for eating out. this is pretty low for our area. most people i know that make the same amount of money as i do spend twice as much with less people in the house.
I don't have any figures about the amount of fuel we use. We have to have a minivan for all of us to go somewhere in one vehicle. And my personal vehicle is no gas miser. But I may only drive it 3000 miles a year. The minivan we've averaged about 9000mi/year since we bought it.
Until hydrogen powered cars become more widespread though we won't be buying any new vehicles.
I'm not wild about hybrids because i don't think batteries are any better for the environment than burning fuel.
Converting Gas engines to run hydrogen I think is the best bet.
I don't think our transportation impact is that great since we aren't running kids back and forth to activities every night and we have always made an effort to consolidate trips.
and last but not least. I view people that hold stock with BMI calculations with the same derision as those that in the past believed in phrenology.
Ursula Andress, Catherine Deneuve, and Charo, twice...
Ah the new religion,
Now combining the sudo sceince of global warming with a little good old fashion scapegoating.
Speaking as a 5'8" guy weighing in at around 135 pounds, this sounds alful facist to me. Nobody would call me fat but replace global warmin with economic struggles and fat people with jew and our intelectual elite sound pretty much like Hitler did in the the late 1920s.
Can we get back to real science before we completely destroy the world pretty please?
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
So Calista Flockhart was in fact just caring for the environment? Who knew.
Full Tilt
Yeah, but think about all the resources they're not:
- Not buying new clothing every year to stay in fashion?
- Not hotrodding on a Jet Ski at the lake?
- Taking up and paying for two seats on the plane but only getting one skimpy rubbery meal?
- Keeping the heat at 60 in the winter?
- Not burning fuel to go to the movies because HBO is so much more comfortable?
- Not flying in grapes from Chile to feed a winter-time vegetarian ethos when fried wheat do just fine?
Hey, I'm not advocating it, but let's have a full accounting here. Oh, right, that's really hard and there's less opportunity to be priggish. Sort of like me not reading TFA.My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
A skinny person with a really high metabolism
There's current thinking that different varieties of gut bacteria play a huge role here. Apparently some types can metabolize more types of food than others. The trick is the higher caloric content generated doesn't properly feed back into the hunger satiety mechanism, so the average person with highly efficient bacteria will tend to gain weight.
So, either fill up skinny people with more efficient bacteria and figure out how to deal with the hunger problem, or fill up fat people with the less efficient bacteria, but have to produce more food. Hey, there's a novel approach for anti-global-warming funding!
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
... made a troll scientific report and people actually dignify it by responding as if it would deserve the publicity.
"How to spot and deal a troll" should be a first grade class.
Why we we have to hate. Its time to leave fat people alone. They are not the evil spawn of Satan. Go find some other class of people to hate like say Preppies.
Rob Miracle http://www.robmiracle.com
... 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.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
It's truly frightening that you could write five paragraphs and still overlook the reason for the recent food shortages.
In most cases, obesity results from emotional distress. People who are poorly adjusted sometimes turn to food as a coping mechanism. Almost all obese people use food to meet their emotional needs in this way.
If we want to end obesity, we need to educate parents about the link between associating food with nurturing behavior and obesity. This way people will learn to cope with their stress in healthier ways, such as feigning illness, attempting suicide or picking fights to get attention.
I don't know who invented BMI but math wasn't his best subject. Humans are three dimensional so there should be a power of three in the BMI equation somewhere. There isn't, what we have is a quadric curve where the middle bit happens to fit middle size people.
If you go outside the "medium" range it all falls apart, tall people come out as obese and short people come out as underweight.
We need to scrap it an try again.
No sig today...
So, it's the fraction of the developed world's population that uses 18% more resources and not the developed world's 320% relative per-capita consumption that's the problem?
I'm a 300lb dude who rides a bike to work. I live in a metro area where 110lb women and 150lb guys drive their finely toned asses in two hours from their West Virginia, 5kW-power-use-when-no-one's-home McMansions in their big SUVs. I call bullshit.
I'm not interested in arguing whether or not fat people eat more, because no one bothers to look at the real facts about obesity anyway. Let's just assume I consume 18% more food resources than someone whose body fits the societal ideal.
That means I consume 377% of the food resources as someone in, say Kenya, as opposed to the thin, virtuous person's 320%.
I also consume 5% of the gasoline and a tiny fraction of the natural gas (small house) that my skinny, far-flung "suburb" counterparts use, but that wouldn't possibly factor in. Of course it doesn't factor in because the "obese" are always lying when they say they ride a bike or walk to work. That couldn't possibly be true. They're too disgusting for that to be true.
Hell, I'm a fattie... so I *produce* copious amounts of natural gas, don't I?
*fart*
Whoops. Excuse me. I should bottle that.
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.
--Not to be worried, Pitr fix.
For an annecdotal study, simply visit a non-upper class mall in your neighborhood and sit in the food court for 30min. Grotesquely obese will rapidly become average, shifting your bell curve a good 50+ lbs to the right, and skinny becoming the left-side outliers.
I'm sure that if you removed the (qualified) medical reasons, the generally husky/bigger, but not fat, people, merely the margin of error would change. Americans are overweight with many just plain old FAT!
"The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
Saving the planet is only a priority for those who can afford it. The best barometer of Western economies is the number of people engaged in planet saving. When things actually get bad, people go back to worrying about saving themselves.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
Tall people cause global warming and higher food prices.
Highly physically fit people cause global warming and higher food prices.
Healthy people who move around cause global warming and higher food prices.
People who aren't starving at the edge of metabolic functioning cause global warming and higher food prices.
Men (who are larger than women...) cause global warming and higher food prices.
Yes. People who eat more food than other people who don't eat as much as them...eat more food than other people who don't eat as much as them. Yes, they are a larger part of the demand set...than people who are a smaller part of the demand set.
I'm glad that this study has been released right now so as to get this jackass notion fixed in people's minds right now, so that we don't have to waste time considering it in the future with any seriousness at all.
Why?
Because if humanity EVER gets to the point where the food consumption habits ALONE of a portion of the population actually substantially impact the global environment and/or global economics to a serious degree (which, still, right now, it's not) then we have much bigger problems than "some fat people need to eat less". The problems are more like "serious percentages of the human race are starving to death because the food DOESN'T EXIST to feed them"...which is absolutely not the problem right now, and hopefully will NEVER be a problem. Right now, food problems are a simple matter of price, NOT actual global availability.
Ugh, and duh.
Given enough hydrogen, just about anything is possible.
BMI does not take in to account a person's build, age, or even sex. According to the BMI quacks, a man and woman of the same height should be the same weight. That's not juts quackery, that's quackery that kills people. I have known people with a BMI that would come out as grossly obese, but had - measured - less than 5% body fat, because of a massively muscular build. The reason more Americans are overweight is because the definition of overweight keeps changing, more than anything else.
I can't help but wonder if the "London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine," or at least these two quacks, are funded by pharmaceutical companies that are heavily in to the weight loss drug market.
Soylent Green.
It's the only way to deal with the explosive population growth of overweight people.
A few other things in the U.S. could also be the cause of so much obesity. Take for instance MSG. Although it's said to be harmless, look outside the U.S. for studies on it's effects. Now go look in your cabinets for foods that contain it. Nearly all chips, any pre-prepared food mixes, nearly 50% of fast food, as well as restaurant chain food contain it. With that much of it, not just the occasional bit in, it's bound to have some adverse effects on our metabolism, as well as cause more food addiction. Look at how little many other countries use MSG(Mono Sodium Glutamate.) Another thing would be to look Corn Sugar usage. The use of real sugars, not processed modified corn sugars, are more easily digested and metabolized in the body, but we have corn subsidies to fill, so we all get Corn Sugar in everything that used to have sugar. Try to find anything but natural Maple syrup that uses Cane Sugar instead of Corn Sugar. I doubt you can. I cut out soda completely, and steer clear of Corn Sugar completely. I avoid MSG and pre-prepared foods that use it, and do my research before eating anywhere because you'd be surprised at MSG usage. Since then, and with a moderate workout plan, I've lost over 15% body fat and increased my muscle mass tremendously.
It really depends on just how many calories go in vs how many are expended. New England Journal of Medicine had a study about 15 years ago, looking at exercise and eating habits of thin, and obese people. Obese people tended to underestimate the amount of food they ate by 50% !!, and overestimated the amount of exercise by 2x. Thin people had about the opposite experience.
Low fat food may be more of a culprit, since many of the stomach and intestinal hormones (CCK, somatostatin, GIP) are triggered/released by fat, which then produce the "full" sensation. Look at the French - tons of fatty food, and they are skinny with much less heart disease. Yeah - they eat less (feeling full?) and walk more. Portion sizes in America are ridiculous.
There's nothing magic about food - if you eat too much, it gets converted to fat. And please, no vegan rants - England looked at a random sampling of 1000 people who reached the age of 100, and only 4 were vegetarians, all the rest ate meat routinely. It's not eating meat that can cause heart disease, but the lack of fruits and veggies. Yes I agree Americans could stand to eat less meat, but mostly just need to eat less.
..........FULL STOP.
It has nothing to do with girth and body fat, and everything to do with actual dietary consumption and metabolism. A high energy person with a higher metabolism will eat a whole lot more food than one with a lower metabolism. Just because a person is overweight doesn't necessarily mean that the person eats more than one meal a day...they simply tend to store fat more efficiently than someone who burns through it inefficiently.
You also have to take into account the effects of the actual diet...if a person is overweight from a diet of mostly bread products, vs. a person overweight from eating a lot of pizza, bacon, etc., the latter person's diet would contribute greater to global warming as a result of the length of the food chain and resulting pollution it takes to produce meat vs. wheat products, etc. And a skinny person with a high metabolism, they'd be the absolute worst of all. They'd eat and eat, and wastefully lose their calories instead of carrying them around and prolonging the next meal.
In that blog post, I suggested some follow-up research:
I guess it takes a while to get the grants...
I'm not convinced that portion size is even close the the whole story. I can gorge myself and lose weight, as long as it is all meat and fat. As soon as you throw a little sugar in (which means any carb including bread) I balloon up almost immediately. I can starve myself with tiny portions, and if there is any significant amount of sugar in my diet, I will be fat.
I know you didn't talk about exercise, but that is the other myth that tends to go with "eat less = skinny". For me, I simply will not lose fat from exercise, no matter how much I get. I build muscle like there is no tomorrow, but don't lose any fat. What this means for me is that if I eat small portions, and exercise a lot, I become MORE obese. The only way that I can get myself out of the "obese" range is by eating all protean and fat, while getting little to no exercise. If I go with a carnivorous diet, I will lose the fat, but if I exercise, my muscle mass puts be right back into the "obese" range.
The biggest problem is that weight has become a religion. It is absurd to think that someone whose ancestors have been eating beef for the last 5000 years would have the same nutritional requirements as someone whose ancestors has been picking fresh fruit from trees for the last 5000 years. Until we can get past the "fat people are evil" mentality, and accept that different people have different nutrition/exercise needs, we won't get anywhere with the problem.
I notice that all of your meals have eggs, meat and/or cheese. Those came from some animals. What do you want to bet those animals were raised on corn products?
Wait, are you suggesting that a North American diet doesn't make North Americans slow and sluggish? Because, as someone who lives surrounded by the fuckers (I are American), I beg to differ.
Have you ever been to a North American mall?
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
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.
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
#1 - BMI is complete and utter bullshit, as you've discovered. Go with the highly technical "do I look fat in the mirror" test. Or get your body fat measured.
#2 - If you think you might be obese, you probably are. Barring anorexia, if you're not, then you will at least get in better shape.
#3 - It sounds like you're suggesting that if you put on more muscle, you're more obese than if you don't put any on. If I'm reading your comments correctly, then it's pretty obvious you don't have any idea what you're talking about.
I assure you that you're making yourself worse off by not exercising, no matter what your BMI says.
if your BMI is 29 without muscle, but 31 with muscle, it doesn't matter because your body fat mass is the same. Hell, your body fat percentage is higher without muscle.
Jesus Christ, go to a freaking doctor already. Every time I read your comment, I am awestruck by one more ridiculous assertion. Your post just seems to be along the lines of: I look bigger when I put on muscle. Therefore I don't work out because bigger = less healthy. Stop hating fat people, guys. We're all different, and maybe in some ethnicities, being obese is the most healthy way to be. Here, I'll quote you for you: And until ridiculously unhealthy people are all healthy, I will continue to show concern for my fellow man, and strive to improve humanity by pushing them to improve their health and the well-being of this world.
Disclaimer: some of what I said here could be self-loathing, since I used to be fat and am still working on getting in terrific shape.
Yeah, you ate a lot of corn there. The point is that most of the animals we eat, eat corn.
It's Stone Age animist thinking to believe that, when you eat an animal that ate corn, you thereby eat corn yourself.Take it a stage further! You ate the cow; the cow ate corn; the corn was fertilised with manure. Ergo, you ate manure.
Except, of course, that you obviously didn't. The "transitive" argument works when calculating the energy cost of food, but not when thinking of its ingedients.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
You miss understand my point. The word "obese" is in quotes because I am quoting others by using it. I would never suggest that having more muscle is bad. My point is that studies that use the term "obese" almost always use BMI, and it is a worthless measurement. If you reread my post understanding that my example is showing why the word "obese" is pointless in this context, you will probably find that you disagree less.
STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS AHEAD
;)
OK, fine. But in that case, grammar/punctuation point: The use of quotes around "obese" in this case would be "required" even if you weren't quoting others--when using a word as a term, you should put quotation marks around it (or italicize it, in some sources).
I put quotes around "required" because I know Slashdotters like to argue against formal rules of spelling.
This is actually a prime example of why knowledge of punctuation rules is essential: Because Belial6 did not know the rules of punctuation, Belial6 failed to correctly convey the intended message.
And yes, I do find I disagree less. I'm raging less at your comments now
In any case, get the heck off Slashdot and go running! I should be doing the same.
I just made a 6-week move to another town with only books, a laptop for work, exercise clothes, and work clothes; this minimizes distractions. I really shouldn't be on Slashdot right now. I should be running!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.