I’ve already told you about the issue of Americans’ increasing obesity with respect to fuel efficiency, but I’ve found two more reasons to give Mother Nature a break and to want to become slimmer:
- Larger mass per person means that airlines burn more fuel to fly you places. And I’m not just talking a little — it’ll mean burning 350 million additional gallons of gasoline (that’s 3.8 millions tons of carbon dioxide) per year, just due to all of the extra fat, according to UK publication The Guardian.
- USA Today reports that due to the higher food and fuel demands of these overweight people, 1 billion extra metric tons of carbon emissions from all overweight and obese people in the world are produced per year. Not over the course of a lifetime — over the course of a YEAR.
I, for one, was repulsed before, but this new information disgusts me. I hope that this makes you gag when you even think about going to the drive-thru again (or at least this month, if you’re so dependent on the darn things).
With two-thirds of Americans overweight or obese, according to the NIH, I wish that I could tell you that these numbers will be declining in the coming years… but as long as people keep shoving their faces with fast food and neglecting the food pyramid, this number will rise in the coming years (experts, as quoted from ABC news reports, say that by 2015, three-fourths of Americans will instead fit this description). Oh, and this trend doesn’t just apply to the US; citizens of many other countries worldwide are experiencing similar, um, gains. Looks like most of you need to drop the Ben and Jerry’s and pick up some Horton (aka, P90X). If you’re offended, I’m not sorry; in fact, you’re the one offending me for not showing Mother Nature better etiquette if you don’t even try.
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