Are you feeling guilty yet?

Stay Slim To Save The Planet, UK Scientists Say

LONDON - Overweight people eat more than thin people and are more likely to travel by car, making excess body weight doubly bad for the environment, according to a study from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

"When it comes to food consumption, moving about in a heavy body is like driving around in a gas guzzler," and food production is a major source of greenhouse gases, researchers Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts wrote in their study, published in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

"We need to be doing a lot more to reverse the global trend towards fatness, and recognise it as a key factor in the battle to reduce (carbon) emissions and slow climate change," the British scientists said.

They estimated that each fat person is responsible for about one tonne of carbon dioxide emissions a year more on average than each thin person, adding up to an extra one billion tonnes of CO2 a year in a population of one billion overweight people.

The European Union estimates each EU citizen accounts for 11 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year.

Apart from the obvious "governing your lifestyle" socialism, there is a glaring error with the assumptions made.

How many of you know of a skinny person who eats and eats and eats and never gains weight? If it's how much you consume that's an issue, and not, presumably how much you weigh, then ALL people should be taken into account, not their body weight. Of course, it's all a phantom menace anyway.

It's really hard to fathom how something like this is considered newsworthy, however.