Obesity apparently accelerates climate change

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This is not a dark press release from climate stickers, but a study by The Obesity Society in the journal “Obesity”. The scientific association for the study of obesity and its treatment wants to show that in addition to the growth of the world population, the increasing weight of people also causes an increase in CO₂. This is due to the average metabolic rate, which largely depends on a person’s body weight.

The US Council for Agricultural Research and Economics reportedly said that overweight people “waste” about 140.7 gigatons of food each year.

This is so-called metabolic waste, ie food that is consumed when the calorie requirement has already been met. The production of these non-essential foods alone causes some 240 million tons of CO₂ emissions.

Increased traffic load

Overweight people are responsible for a total of about 700 megatons of unnecessary CO₂ emissions. This corresponds to about 1.6 percent of all human emissions. For the purposes of the study, people with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher are considered overweight.

The reasons for the excessive CO₂ emissions are not only the increased food consumption and metabolism, but also the increased fuel consumption for transport. Obesity leads to increased consumption of fossil fuels. According to this, obese people cause about a fifth more greenhouse gases in traffic than people of normal weight.

Treating obesity helps not only those affected, but society as a whole, the researchers said: “Obesity not only affects the health of affected individuals, untreated obesity can also contribute to environmental problems.” (kes)

Source: Blick