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Subscribe to RSSObesity is threatening the world’s future food security, according to a study published Monday that calculated the weight of the global population at 316 million tons.
Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said increasing levels of fatness around the world could have the same impact on global resources as an extra half a billion people.
In a report published in the journal BMC Public Health [PDF file here], the researchers estimated that 17 million tons of the global body mass was due to people being overweight.
Despite only making up five per cent of the world's population, the United States accounts for almost a third of the world's weight due to obesity, the researchers found.
In contrast, Asia has 61 per cent of the world's population but only 13 per cent of the world's weight due to obesity.
When working out is too much of a good thing
The study is published to coincide with the largest-ever United Nations conference, Rio+20, which will discuss sustainable development.
Using World Health Organization data from 2005, the scientists calculated the average global body weight at 137 pounds, but in North America the average was 178 pounds.
Get off your butt and exercise, orders your doc
One of the authors of the paper, Professor Ian Roberts, told the BBC: "When people think about environmental sustainability, they immediately focus on population. Actually, when it comes down to it, it’s not how many mouths there are to feed, it is how much flesh there is on the planet."
"If every country in the world had the same level of fatness that we see in the USA, in weight terms that would be like an extra billion people of world average body mass," he added.
Roberts said health campaigns and urban design that promotes walking or cycling were among the best ways to tackle the problem, which was primarily caused by sedentary modern lifestyles.
“We do not move our bodies so much but we are biologically programmed to eat,” he told the Daily Telegraph. "We often point the finger at poor women in Africa having too many babies. But we've also got to think of this fatness thing; it's part of the same issue of exceeding our planetary limits."
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There need to be some cutting-edge online support sites/forums/networks for weight problems at both ends of the spectrum: obese and anorexic/bulimic. ASAP. These weight problems are deeply behavioral and those populations need lots of constant support to deal with and break the habit.
and almost all of it seems to be in Chicago - God these people are hugely fat; like today, it's 89 degrees at 8am and there are huge obese disgusting people waddling around wearing sweaters and coats over their stretchwear, is that hiding the fat rolls? ...and stuffing whole danish and donuts into their triple-chin faces.
I swear to god - one woman just gained 3 pounds by breathing in air - - - - - -air, for christ's sake!
Anyone associated with this crap study needs to be shot. Observations and conclusions are simply the ramblings of twisted little minds full of falsehoods instead of facts.
Get rid of all the Left wing ignorant idiot democrats and the world will again be safe. Problem solved.
Simple solution.... only eat when you are actually hungry and exercise moderately 3 or 4 times a week. We eat on some sort of preconceived schedule and we eat too many calories at each meal. If you keep your meals to around 500 calories, you'll likely be hungry 4 or 5 times a day. Also - a meal that size will be much less likely to be stored as bodyfat, especially if you exercise a bit. In general, most Americans are inactive and eat way too much. It ain't rocket science.
OMG, with that amount of excessive weight on earth, will it effect the orbit of the earth around the sun? Ok.. what moron wrote the headline for this article? Btw guys, obesity based on BMI has been shown to be inaccurate, and doesnt even account for bone mass, muscle mass and even head size. Sensationalism using statistics is nothing but journalism at its worse again!
My day is set; it's going to be filled with laughter. No; not from the article, stupid as it was but from the image of the dumbass limey scratching his head in worry about the earth tipping over.
Umm... did anybody bother to check the math on this study? Because it's not even remotely CLOSE to being true. If the collective weight of the world is 316 million tons, that's 632 billion pounds. A third of that is about 211 billion pounds. Divided by the US population of 312 million, and you have an average American weight of 675 pounds.
So no, the US population does not account for anywhere close to a third of the world's weight. It's more like 8.7%, based on the average American weight of 187 pounds given.
uhm - - - 675 pounds seems about right, have you actually seen the massive masses out there
Fast Food, Super Size me! Obesity is also caused by the constant advertisements force fed to us by our tv networks, Mc donalds, Burger King, Dunkin Donuts, no wonder we have an obesity epidemic. We take more calories than we can burn. And for that matter, you don't have to eat 3 times what a normal person intakes.. Get your arse of the couch and burn some calories, eat hemp and do yoga and meditate. Obesity usually comes with a sense of mentality that is quite selfish. I say we make Mcdonalds illegal. it costs our health care system billions of dollars every year due to Heart disease and diabetes. not to mention tobacco ..
Obesity is a state of mind.
there are a lot of reasons in the disparity. Like availability of food. yes there are hungry people in America, but we don't have the rampant starvation that exist in much of the 3rd world. One of the reasons American are overweight is simple we have food! very few countries in the world have a grocery store and walmart and couple fast food restaurants just donw the street. That makes a big difference.
NOT only that but UM hello did anyone talk about height? last time I checked the average American tends to be a bit taller than the average Asian. me well I do weigh the average American weight at 178. if I dropped down to 137 I would be emaciated and likely dying.
Once again this is nothing more than an attempt at a power grab and control by the liberal and environmental extremists... When are people going to wake up and see that the environmental movement is not about progress, it is about taking our rights freedoms and liberties away from us. Why is it that we have it so good in America? Why because capitalism and free markets. Freedom is what made us great. The environmental movement and don’t kid yourself this is from the environmental extremist are nothing more than power hungry people bent on the destruction of the USA because we are too powerful. It’s not about saving the planet, it’s about controlling our lives.
I suspect that Obama will send up a drone to shoot fat people. What if Oprah is spotted first? Then again, when one looks at actual health data, obese people survive heart attacks better than fit people. What is the real solution? Make obesity pay. Don't penalize the skinny guy who can eat 10 Big Macs for lunch and not gain a pound. Make obese people pay their fair share on airplanes, for health insurance, on buses!! If they are willing to pay for their obesity, that should be their option. Don't make me pay for them because that doesn't make them change their behavior. Anyone with a brain knows that you make rules to change behavior. You don't impact the people not intended with a rule. You have to make the rule hit the people with the behavior you want to change.
There is a solution to this. Proper nutrition. A company is being very successful in the United States with helping people safely and effectively lose weight while saving money. See
The LivingVi.com website is powered by ViSalus Sciences, which has already helped people to lose millions of pounds and transform people's lives. We just need to get better nutrition rather than the fast food and groceries that are filled with preservatives fueled by corporate profits.
At Kevin C-752389Kevin C-752389.
Your calculations are wrong because the overweight pound (17 million tons) would have to be dividied amongst the world's population who is overweight. Over 2/3 of the population are under weight or starving (look at 100s of millions in Africa), so you can't count them in your calculation.
This boils down to not eating right, eating too much, and not exercising. Also, to mention that in the past people didn't exercise and still were in their proper weight is misleading. In past (70's or earlier) most people walked a lot (not everyone had cars, especially the younger generation). I remember walking to the park, playing outside with my friends, riding bycicles, etc. I would deliver the newspaper early in the mornings, 7 days a week, on a bicycle, running over 3 miles.
Much of the younger generation just plays video games, drives to everywhere (or adults like us spoil them and don't let them walk).
To conclude, in the past, even doing normal non-sports/exercise activities people would walk more (even to change the TV channel). We need to start moving, stop watching too much TV, stop too much computer/cell phone usage, etc. If we don't change, the younger generation, and the next ones will have a shorter lifespan and more health problems than our generations or the ones before us.
What a messed-up world we have created -
on one side of the coin we have millions of people overweight from an overabundance - while on the other - millions of others starving and dying from lack of food.
Fat people in America Could be due to :
1-All large quantity of process Junk food we eat and
2-Hormones we consumed from animal meat that causing us to get diabetes and cancer among others ;(