Obesity
= Global Warming?
Go
here for the story
Researchers
in Geneva at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
say that overweight and obese people need more food, which
requires more fuel to transport them and the food they eat.
You
know, I can see where a person might try to make this connection
because there is a thread of logic to follow. Yeah, an extra
container of food being shipped requires more fuel, and a
car burns more fuel carrying an extra 100 pounds of person.
But what does that have to do with Joe and Sue losing weight?
This
study seems to be more of a make work project to me rather
than directly addressing the merits of our challenge with
either obesity or pollution though.
Yes,
I'm all in favor of science and research and understand how
some research projects on the surface appear to have little
practical significance, but to the specialist might be breakthrough
work.
This
isn't breakthrough work.
I
wouldn't have signed off on paying for this study, but I would
sign off on something that directly addressed helping overweight
people lose weight, or to engineers to invent more efficient
machines that pollute less.
If
you are overweight and want to lose weight, does your proposed
contribution to global warming inspire you to eat less? I
wouldn't think many would make this connection, and this is
an important reason why this study isn't terribly useful.
The
article states; "At least 400 million adults worldwide
are obese. The World Health Organization (WHO) projects by
2015, 2.3 billion adults will be overweight and more than
700 million will be obese."
Those
stats are frightening. Imagine the global health problems
that we'll face. Imagine how many more people will personally
suffer the diseases associated with being overweight and obese.
We definitely need to make a concerted effort to get away
from believing that 1000 to 3000 calorie meals are rewarding.
There is more to it than that, but for sure the dominant practice
of only feeling satisfied from overeating and encouraging
others to overeat at family dinners "eat, eat, there's
plenty to go around", needs to be recognized as unhealthy.
Research
that directly benefits addressing the global obesity problem
- let's do it. Never mind the junk science.
©
2008 Rhino Fitness
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