Fatties Cause Global Warming
Ben Jackson - Environment Editor - The Sun
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2387203.ece
Apr 21, 2009

Comments by John Cartmell, MS, at end of article.

Scientists warned that the increase in big-eaters means more food production — a major cause of CO2 gas emissions warming the planet.

Overweight people are also more likely to drive, adding to environmental damage.

Dr Phil Edwards, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: “Moving about in a heavy body is like driving in a gas guzzler.”

Each fat person is said to be responsible for emitting a ton more of climate-warming carbon dioxide per year than a thin one - creating an extra billion tons of CO2 per year according to The World Health Organization.

The scientists say providing extra grub for them to guzzle adds to carbon emissions that heat up the world, melting polar ice caps, raising sea levels and killing rain forests.

The environmental impact of fat humans is made even worse because they are more likely to travel by car — another major cause of carbon emissions.

And researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine say wealthy nations like the US and Britain are getting fatter by the decade.

Dr Phil Edwards said: “Food production accounts for about one fifth of greenhouse gases."

“We need to do a lot more to reverse the global trend towards fatness. It is a key factor in the battle to reduce carbon emissions and slow climate change. It is time we took account of the amount we are eating.

“This is about over-consumption by the wealthy countries. And the world demand for meat is increasing to match that of Britain and America."

“It is also much easier to get in your car and pick up a pint of milk than to take a walk.”

The study by Dr Edwards and colleague Ian Roberts is published in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

Dr Edwards went on: “We are not just pointing the finger at fat people. All populations are getting fatter and it has an impact on the environment.  “UK health surveys estimate fatness has increased from an average body mass index of 26 to 27 in the last ten years."

Anyone with a BMI above 25 is overweight, while more than 30 is obese. A staggering 40 per cent of Americans are obese, among 300 million worldwide. Australian Professor Paul Zimmet predicted a disastrous obesity pandemic back in 2006. Sun doctor Carol Cooper said last night: “I’m not sure which came first, people getting fat and driving or the other way around. It is true fat people eat more food than average."

“A few obese people have a hormone problem, although most simply don’t use enough calories and eat too many. But making them feel guilty antagonizes them and may not help.”

John Cartmell, MS, comments

This report generates more questions than the simple answers it seeks to provide. From the ABC news report of this story at http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Diet/story?id=4865889&page=1, we find the following comments:

• "We throw away far more food than the extra 460 calories per day they point out," said Dr. Tim Church, chairman in health wisdom at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. "In other words, most of our food overproduction is due to waste, not overeating. It is estimated that one-fourth of the food produced in the U.S. goes to waste. And does having 50 extra pounds in a Chevy Tahoe really affect gas mileage? I do not think so."

• "There is enough stigma attached to obesity as it is." said Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale Prevention Research Center in New Haven, Conn. "We should very carefully avoid making it seem as if overweight people are responsible for environmental decline."

• "Obese people have enough issues to deal with without being demonized for their impact on the environment," agreed Keith-Thomas Ayoob, pediatric nutritionist and associate professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. "The truth is, all people are an environmental burden."

• "It is true that obese people eat more than lower-weight people," said Madelyn H. Fernstrom, associate professor and director of the UPMC Weight Management Center in Pittsburgh. "However, it's only in places where there's a lot of food. I don't see this as an environmental issue. ... I understand the concept but do not agree with the authors' conclusions."

• Jackie Newgent, a New York City culinary nutritionist and author of an upcoming cookbook on "green" culinary options, agreed.
  "The bathroom scale is not a good judge of someone's carbon footprint," she said.

Aside from the concerns that obese people contribute more than lean people to global warming, it should be pointed out that there is no consensus among world climatologists that global warming actually exists. According to the testimony of climatologists at the 2008 and 2009 International Conferences on Climate Change (http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=865DBE39-802A-23AD-4949-EE9098538277 and http://www.heartland.org/events/NewYork09/index.html):

• UK Astrophysicist Piers Corbyn: “There is no evidence that CO2 has ever driven or will ever drive world temperatures and climate change."

• Geologist Dr. Don Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University who has authored eight books and 150 journal publications: “The average of the four main temperature measuring methods is slightly cooler since 2002. This cooling exactly fits the pattern of timing of warm/cool cycles over the past 400 years."

• Don Easterbrook, professor of geology at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington:“The most recent global warming that began in 1977 is over, and the Earth has entered a new phase of global cooling.”

• Hurricane expert and Meteorologist Dr. William Gray: “Global warming] has been over-hyped tremendously; most of the climate change we have seen is largely natural. I think we are brainwashing our children terribly.”

• Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic and of the European Union. “Environmentalism and the global warming alarmism is challenging our freedom. I’m afraid that the current "crisis" will be misused for radically constraining the functioning of the markets and market economy around the world.”

• Arthur Robinson, curator of a global warming petition signed by more than 32,000 American scientists, including more than 10,000 with doctorate degrees - rejecting the alarmist assertion that global warming has put the Earth in crisis and is caused primarily by mankind.

• "Al Gore was invited to speak to us tonight, and we even agreed to pay his $200,000 honoraria. He refused. We invited some of the well-known scientists associated with the alarmist camp, and they refused."

As a health professional, I know the importance of not confusing symptoms with cause, and the importance of treating the cause of disease rather than only the symptoms. Whether global warming actually exists or not, it is folly to blame it on human overpopulation, and then focus on treating the symptoms (environmental impacts) while ignoring the cause (overpopulation).

As for obese people specifically contributing more to global warming than lean people, the following points should be considered.

• A common misconception of nutrition, even by nutrition professionals, is that proper nutrition is all about eating a well balanced diet. The fact is, if a person has digestive issues, it's possible to be well fed and still nutritionally unsound.

•  Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is associated with Leaky Gut Syndrome, in which digested and undigested material leaks passively into the blood, increasing the risk of excess calories in the blood being converted to fat and stored. In the case of Leaky Gut, the number of calories consumed may not be as important as how fast the calories enter the blood. Certain medications including Non Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAID) like aspirin, Ibuprofen or Aleve, have been reported to increase the risk of leaky gut. Other research has associated obesity with digestive issues like IBS, acid reflux disease (GERD), gall bladder disease, and cancers of the gall bladder, pancreas or colon.  https://louisville.edu/medschool/gimedicine/division-lecture-files/tiu-lectures/Can%20the%20gut%20fight%20obesity.pdf

• The study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, associating obesity with global warming, was not a double blind study (gold standard of research) done under controlled conditions. It was a statistical analysis of population obesity charts without regard to the potential for intestinal diseases to contribute to obesity.

• The study made two assumptions;

  • Global warming does in fact exist

  • Obese people are contributing to the climate change by eating more than others

Neither of these assumptions can in fact be verified and should not be considered necessarily true.

Regarding the study, Dr. Edwards commented that "UK health surveys estimate fatness has increased from an average body mass index of 26 to 27 in the last ten years." Such a weight gain is exactly what you would expect when baby boomers in the U.S. and Britain moved into their 50s, where a weight gain of 10 lbs is common, despite no increase in calories or decrease in physical activity. Part of the weight gain is caused by a dramatic drop in growth hormone secretion, which can contribute to increased blood sugar with excess calories being converted to fat and stored. Digestive efficiency also declines with middle age, increasing the risk for maldigestion of protein, which may result in a higher than normal absorption of carbohydrates and fats, with excess calories being converted to fat and stored. Middle age weight gain is normal, and has no association with increased caloric intake, or increased impact on the environment.

Under a private system of health care, individuals with high risk lifestyles like smoking or drinking pay a higher premium for health care coverage. One of the concerns of a socialized health care system, like the UK has, is people will be denied service if they don't comply with approved (politically correct) social standards of behavior. But under a socialized health care system, like in the U.K., everyone is paying the premium for those at increased risk of disease, so the government is justified in denying treatment to those who fail to adopt healthy lifestyles. (Surgery was denied a smoker under the UK system because smokers sometimes have healing complications.) Obesity was defined as a disease a few years ago (perhaps in anticipation). Who's to say under a national health care system, that our government won't deny health coverage or treatment to obese citizens who are assumed to contribute more to global warming by eating excess calories, even when their obesity is related to aging or digestive disease with no impact on the environment whatsoever?

I have my doubts about socialized medicine being better than the imperfect system we have now. For more thoughts on socialized health care, please visit http://www.dietadvisor.com/news_socialized_health_care.htm

John W. Cartmell, MS
www.dietadvisor.com

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