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The Fuel Cost of Obesity
thecarchik writes "America loves to complain about gas mileage and the cost of gasoline. As it turns out, part of the problem is us. How much does it really matter? A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found a 1.1 percent increase in self-reported obesity, which translates into extra weight that your vehicle has to haul around. The study estimates that 1 billion extra gallons of fuel were needed to compensate for passenger weight gained between 1960 and 2002."
So does this mean I can tell fat people that my wallet is fatter than theirs?
lets make a program to make all those people pull their cars instead :)
One key finding was that almost 1 billion gallons of gasoline per year can be attributed to passenger weight gain in non-commercial vehicles between 1960 and 2002--this translates to .7 percent of the total fuel used by passenger vehicles annually.
So they found it had nearly nothing to do with it. Spiffy.
offsetting this by the fuel savings coming from reduced family size. People simply have fewer children on average than they used to.
Wow you really can make numbers say anything you want. Remember that thanks to all the SUV's, the weight of the average car has increased since the 60's, not decreased as you would expect from losing the chassis and moving to a monocoque design.
But hey, let's bash fat people. How about that fat tax?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Although 1B gals sounds like a lot, consider that Wiki says the US alone used 138B of gas in 2006. So saving 1B gals over the course of 20 years globally is a relative drop in the bucket.
What someone needs to do is track the relative fuel cost based on the weight and number of vehicles over the years, and it should be come apparent that we should be driving motorcycles and lightweight double passenger cars rather than trying to wrap our minds about how human weight affects oil consumption.
Tickets should be by total weight just like freight. 250lb total weight = x, 300lb = x+y%x, 350lb=x+2y%x That would be a better solution than the craptastic fees for everything
"Rule 1: Cardio. When the zombie outbreak first hit, the first to go, for obvious reasons... were the fatties."
ridin' Obese; they hatin'.
Is that a fat joke?
... but not quite enough. A typical car weighs 3000lbs. The article (ok, the summary -- I didn't read the article) doesn't say what the weight gain is, but let's assume the difference between "obese" and "not obese" is 30lbs. A typical car has a drag coefficient of .4. And we're driving 45mph. There's also an unknown amount of parasitic drag in the drivetrain.
.7% is pretty high.
The equation
Ok, I don't have the time or inclination to figure this out. But I bet
Whale
Gonorrhea.
The energy crisis is all the fault of McDonalds.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Less than what the US could save by making sure their tires are properly inflated (1.25 billion). let alone what we could save by cleaning out our trunks, removing our winter bags of sand, or other weight just sitting around in the car. Both are much easier than getting people to lose weight, but I doubt if they are getting done. Good luck on getting people to stop being obese to save an non-detectable part of their gas bill. For that matter, it would probably be easier just to appeal to get them to keep from diving as much (which if they walk or bike would also cut into the obese issue).
Remember, if you rub your food on a piece of paper and it turns transparent? It's your window to success!
I know something that America loves to complain about more than fuel prices. Fat Americans. Get over yourself.
It would be nice if reporters did a better job of putting numbers into perspective.
... if you are worried about the fuel that you save if you are less fat. Not using the car/suv/whatever will make you save even more fuel, if i.e. walk a block or 2 to get somewhere instead of going in car, or use more bycicle. Not using the car at all when there are other alternatives will usually be healthier. Taking a bus won't be as healthier as walking or going in bycicle, but still you will save fuel. And all of this works even if you are skinny.
This appears misleading at best. Here's why:
During the time frame from 1960 to now, the average weight of cars has been reduced by one to two TONS. Someone weighing more in a more fuel efficient car LOWERS the amount of fuel used during that same time period. Sure gas mileage took a nose dive when antipollution stuff was first added in the 1970's. But since then, average mileage has gone up. (with the exception of the moms who bought multi-ton SUV's to ferry to the nail salon and pickup kids, instead of letting them ride the bus. And, as to wasting fuel, how much fuel did we use when we allowed lower standards to be used in drilling for oil, resulting in how many millions of barrels lost forever to the US? I know a variety of people who carry their golf clubs ALL the time in their trunk. We don't discuss how much that costs us, or driving kids to numerous after school activities, instead of letting them walk or ride the bike, things which can very easily be changed, we just discuss how much a fat person costs us. I wonder why.
Further:
As the study says, it's self reported.
During that same time period, the definition of obesity has been dramatically changed by the government, lowering the weight levels at which one is considered obese. Therefore more people would self-report being obese. When they first lowered the "normal" weights, 55% of all Americans became overweight by definition. For many people who were not considered by the government to be obese prior to this changing of its weight standard, they became obese overnight. Weight loss programs and weight loss surgery fought to be reimbursable by health insurance, and all too often were successful, making more people use these methods which have less than a 10% success rate over a 5 year time frame.(higher success rates for very short terms are common, leading to weight yo-yo-ing, which has significant negative health impact.) Thus the combination of change of definition of obese, the covering of expensive surgery and expensive weight loss programs, and the resulting yo-yo-ing have led to some higher healthcare costs. Discontinue covering such items that lead to more damage from more weight yo-yoing, and healthcare costs are reduced.
Finally:
Discussing weight has become a national pastime, especially for women. It's rare that I have a conversation longer than a half hour in which an American woman won't tell me how much she has lost, how much she has gained, and how much she had done attempting to lose weight. What a waste of human potential to spend so much time focused on something that contributes nothing to society, other than to help enrich the bank accounts of those selling get skinny quick solutions. When someone espouses waif like existence, watch what their connection to the finances of weight loss is. And notice how many of those waifs are eating disordered. The very thin have significantly increased weight related costs to society.
soapbox off
Do you have any idea how much carbon I've sequestered in fat? Get off my roly poly back.
include $sig;
1;
This study doesn't take into account fatties laziness. Fatties are more likely to sit in the car with the engine running and air conditioning on full blast cuz they're too fucking fat for the climate they live in. Fatties are more likely to drive to the mailbox because their fat knees can't handle their fat bodies.
The fuel cost isn't even the biggest problem. Think about the increased wear and tear on the suspension when a fat person drives a car. 99% of cars don't use progressive rated springs, so a fat person compressing the coils just once messes them up for life. Turning a car with a fat person is harder too and stresses out the tie rods and such. I wish more people would just read this thinspirational fatography blog .
Yep, this matters. 1.25871×10^11 Gal Used.
America has one of the cheapest fuel prices in the world. Stop complaining. it's about 6-7$ a gallon here.
Reading all these posts is making me hungry. Someone pass me another bag of cheetos and a coke.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
This sounds like a perfect argument for regenerative braking... The easy conclusion: fat people should all drive hybrids because they store more kinetic energy
In 1960, even 1980, most everything on a vehicle was metal. Now days, so much of the vehicle is plastic. Plastic saves weight, while having some rigidity and performance. My glove box interior was actually cardboard, something that would be plastic today, due to the water-imperiousness, rigidity and what not (I am guessing weight is the same).
Meanwhile engineering advances have lead us to extract more HP from fuel. A 350cuin engine in 1980got 180HP and 300 ftlb of tq. Now they are about 300/300. With multiple valves per cylinder, the Volumetric Efficiency went up. Multi port fuel injection was an improvement in throttle body fuel injection, which replaced the collaborator. And electronically controlled timing delivered even more power at lower RPMs. So engines could be made smaller, or sold into markets for larger engines.
I fail to see how you can take all that into account and still have a reliable statistic. Because we just don't know where we'd be had we not come up with all those advances (pun unintentional)
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Adding 42 years worth of data results in big number!
The cost of (relatively) cheap gasoline? War, war, and more war. That cheap gasoline is only cheap because we're willing to bankrupt ourselves to get it.
-kgj
In the grand scope of things, 1B gallons over that time span is piss in the ocean.
1B gallons / 31 gallons per barrel = 32,258,064.5 barrels. Thats less than the US consumes in 2 days.
The game.
Yep, judge people by their physical stature/appearance instead of what they contributed to society.
I remember reading about others throughout history that did exactly that with excellent results.
Does this count as invoking Godwin's Rule.
I'm sure billions of gallons per year could be saved if we cut down on having 4 way stops at every single intersection.
We can melt down all the fatties and use them as bio-diesel.
Don't blame me, I voted for Cthulhu.
If America truly loves to complain about gas mileage then why the fuck are there still so many SUVs and big ass trucks on the road everywhere? I think America just loves to complain about obesity.
You're nothing; like me.
by using my body fat instead of whale oil to power my lights.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
I dont give a rats ass what the study says , I for one am sick and tired of all of these "studies". All it is a way to try to tax us even more. Or a bunch of busy bodies trying to control other peaople and what they can / cant and have to do.
Am I overweight ? None of your damn business.
Do I smoke ? None of your damn business.
Do I eat red meat ? None of your damn business.
Do I drink soda pops ? None of your damn business.
What are my sexual preferences ? None of your damn business.
Did I eat my veggies ? None of your damn business.
Do I exercise ? None of your damn business.
Do I go to church ? None of your damn business.
Do I believe in God ? None of your damn business.
Do I use more internet bandwidth than you do ? None of your damn business.
Do I watch Porn ? None of your damn business.
America used to be a place where you were free to live your life however you wanted to as long as you did not directly interfere with the rights of others.
Now America is a place where your free to live your life however you want as long as it does not some how offend some idiot, no matter how stupid that idiot may be.
make obamacare include a provision so that all the fatties get free liposuction which we then faction into biodiesel.
Airlines could do a lot to reduce carbon emissions, and also encourage better public health, by requiring passengers at checkin to stand on a large weighing platform along with their bags, and pay for the total weight. I strenuously object to subsidising the fares of obese people.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
1 billion gallons / 150,000,000 (guesstimate of the average population of the US over the 42 years) / 42 years /365 days = .000438 gallons per person per day.
you mean piss, as in crude, in the ocean, as in the gulf of mexico
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
didn't they raid the back of a liposuction clinic and turn some fatties' liposuctioned adipose tissue that was left out back into soap?
so fatties are smart: they haul around their own biodiesel
all they need is a way to stick the gas intake mechanism in their abdomen, and they have a spare tire, i mean, spare gallon or two waiting to put to use
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The reduction in life expectancy of these obese people should negate the extra consumption
"The study estimates that 1 billion extra gallons of fuel were needed to compensate for passenger weight gained between 1960 and 2002."
And that's just Kirstie Alley.
Did they compare the Fat guy in his 40's who doesn;t go out much to the skinny d-bag jock type that is always driving out to bars three or more times a week to pick up women?
The Study is flawed because it doesn't take to effect that the fat people don't go out driving as much as thin socially active people.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
The brake
*DrugCheese rants*
It just goes to show, the average human being is not that bright.
In Holland we got even higher prices. was at one point over 3 euro, per LITER... for americans, that is a quarter gallon.
So, what do you think, did SUV sales go UP or DOWN?
Remember, this is in a small cold country where many streets were designed centuries ago and so are very narrow.
Yes, you guessed it. They went UP.
There is a certain type of person who votes for tax cuts then complains about cuts in services, buys the biggest car, then complains it don't fit and costs a fortune in fuel. Wants speed bumps in his road, then complains about speed bumps. Complains about medevac helicopts and ambulances making to much noise, but wants the army to deploy for his twisted angle.
Humanity, if we left it to the average person, we would still be in the trees because getting out would mean giving up the big branch they kicked everyone else off.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Toyota Landcruiser isn't technically an SUV, it predates the the acronym(I believe) and was generally referred to as a Light Utility Vehicle, putting it in the same class as a Jeep.
The original SUV, the Chevy Suburban, was basically a truck crossed with a station wagon. And is the template for all large truck-frame SUVs. And it is generally inferior to a 4Wpickup truck in offroad.
As for the others, someone crossed the Sahara in a Chevy Blazer too. So I am skeptical that your "go across the Sahara" is claim is a good litmus test.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Fuel economy has done well, not as good as it might have, but gasoline engine improvements are measured in percents.
When you start with an inefficient process your not going to get remarkable numbers without some major innovation.
Direct injection, turbo charging, start/stop, and other technologies are helping. Yet cars are heavier now because of all the creature comforts we desire and all the government regulations demanding the vehicles transmit the minimal amount of energy to the occupants in a crash.
Crashes that would have killed everyone in your example vehicles and left a vehicle barely recognizable now leave occupants nearly untouched and with some vehicles actually repairable.
Crashes that could not be avoided in your cars these days can be. Situations that were dangerous to drive in are very much less so.
No cars have come far, the race between efficiency and safety is erring to the side of safety.
While people throw out the bogeymen of SUVs and the like they ignore the fact that the majority of sedans get crap mileage as well.
Old beetles usually did 28 to 32 on the highway, took almost twenty seconds to reach 60. You could probably crash an infinite number of them into a new beetle before the new one was not drivable. You of course would have a lot of scrap old beetles laying around afterward.
Taking the mileage out of context does not make your argument better except at a cursory glance.
Frankly I would not dare drive most older cars everyday. Their brakes were horrid and their suspensions not much better.
As for the carb versus fuel injection comparison, get real. What you can do with direct injection shames a carb in both efficiency and pollution.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The weight of passengers is just one issue. The bigger issue is why we're getting fat. Because we stuff our faces with crap made out of high fructose corn syrup, and ungodly amounts of meat. The amount of greenhouse gas pollution created by raising livestock in this country is approximately the same as what's produced by all transportation put together! (almost 1/5th of the total)
Not the portion of transportation costs associated with our extra girth ... the whole thing!
It's common sense that the more weight you haul around the more gas you use. So whether your weight is 400 pounds or you're carrying around 250 pounds of stuff in your trunk/cargo area. You're burning more gas.
What's the cost of you sucking kdawson's fat cock ?
Er... you're aware that you're actually paying what most people would consider a compliment to kdawson, right?
I think a bigger fact missed here is the amount of oil that is used in the production of industrialized food, which is what is making everyone fat.
My guess is that the production and processing of the epic amounts of corn and meat easily use more oil than the marginally extra that is used in lost efficiency of vehicles because of fat people.
If people ate healthier, then we would probably rely less on these industrial processes.
A few years ago I lost 50 lbs with the Hackers Diet.
Before that I was driving an early 1990s Honda Civic. It wasn't tough, but it was harder getting in and out of my car with gut. The Civic sat low to the ground.
People tell me they have mini vans and SUVS because it is convenient for kids and their stuff.
That may be true, but I think part of it is that you climb up into most of these vehicales, making it easier for very heavy people.
That's absolutely correct, and there are other ways to reduce your weight to save a few gallons of gas over your lifetime..Do you really need your ears and all your toes? how about all your teeth, do women really need 2 breasts? and how about testicles, there are 2 of those, also kidney's, lungs, ovaries, redundant, save weight remove one of them and save the planet.
Unless of course everyone starts driving around in 1960 cars.
[...]
As it turns out, part of the problem is us.
[...]
Speak for yourself, White Man.
Yeah, obese people are everywhere in the US today, mostly due to the plastic shite the corporations provide for them to eat. I haven't owned a motor vehicle since 1991 and, guess what? I'm slim & trim from walking and biking.
That's just skirting around the problem, though. In the last couple of decades I've observed a steady trend towards A) larger gas-guzzling vehicles and B) single person occupancy. Americans hold it to be their right (and it is) to drive alone 5 blocks to the supermarket in their huge goddam vehicles. However, if they simply understood the implications of their actions on the environment I feel we'd see far less of it. But instead, the TeeVee has them pissing their britches watching out for murderers, rapists and now terrorists so they will never, ever EVER stop to give someone a ride, even on the hottest or coldest days of the year. On the flip-side, one would be far more inclined to walk to their destination if there were a good chance they'd be offered a ride, as was the case a mere 30 years ago (I remember).
One more thing: I detest BP (and other mega corps) as much as anyone, but blaming them for the destruction of aquatic and wetland habitats and countless rare and valuable species is logically and morally equivalent to blaming Mexico for the US drug problem. The market will work, bringing the supply to where there is the demand, no matter how much imbecile legislation is passed. The problem is the ignorance of the average US citizen. Find some way to fix that and a lot of huge problems simply disappear. I was hopeful that the switch to digital TV would so frustrate a large number of viewers that they would simply give up the tube. That would have had a chance to break the increasingly sophisticated mind control the mega corps have over a vast majority of the US population. Alas, I was wrong and now I and to some degree every inhabitant of this planet are paying the price.
Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
Well, if you ride bicycle more, not only would you reduce the gas consumption by not riding a car, but you would also loose weight and spend less fuel when you actually needed to ride the car. Perhaps you could start doing that a bit. I remember Washington and NY where quite flat cities from when I was there, so it wouldn't be difficult.
Get a feckin' grip USofAians. Multiply your prices by five before you start to complain!
USofAians have no idea of the real world, they have no idea how easy they have it. What will you do when there is nowhere left to invade of oil? Oh yeah, rape a few rain forests and call is "bio-fuel". I forgot.
If your car is getting less than 40mpg urban, then your car is useless; shoulda bought Japanese or European. I suggest you learn to walk. Whoops! Forgot again. There are no footpaths in the USA. For shame.
Airlines could do a lot to reduce carbon emissions, and also encourage better public health, by requiring passengers at checkin to stand on a large weighing platform along with their bags, and pay for the total weight. I strenuously object to subsidising the fares of obese people.
The rule at the airlines is now that if you can't comfortably fit in your own seat without spilling over, then you have to buy two tickets. The seats are small enough that, I can assure you, if you do fit in them, then you're not costing them anything extra if you're heavy, because you can't be that heavy and fit. It used to be that if the flight wasn't full, they didn't care... they'd just let you take two seats, and they'd even give a passenger a seat-belt extender if needed. But those days are gone. The post 9/11 era is reality, and they're going to put as many people in that plane as they can, and squeeze every single dime out of them. And while people complain about that, frankly, it's the only way they're making any money. The checked-baggage fee was the difference between a profit and a loss for Southwest airlines last quarter.
And yes, I see this all the time, working at an airport.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
But isn't it strange that we have 4000 pounds of steel moving a single 200 pound passenger around (most of the time)? 100 years from now they will laugh at this.
"thecarchik writes....A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found a 1.1 percent increase in self-reported obesity....The study estimates that 1 billion extra gallons of fuel were needed"
thecarchik lied to us, because the CDC study doesn't say a word about fuel.
Here's the CDC study, does anyone see anything about fuel? Neither do I.
What the article is really quoting is a 2006 story on Entrepreneur.com titled "economic impact of obesity on automobile fuel consumption" which does conclude that 1 billion extra gallons of fuel were needed, but unfortunately all the references in that article are dead tree so someone would have to go through a lot of effort to fact-check.
I'm not doubting us being fatter has cost more in fuel consumption just as it no doubt has cost more in health care costs, I'm just saying the that the article is misleading, that claiming this is a CDC study was an attempt to make the story sound far more credible than the real source, a 4 yr old story on entrepreneur.com. The linked article is honest and does say it's not the CDC study, but the Slashdot post directly states the CDC study is responsible.
In other words.... it's a trap!
my karma will be here long after I'm gone