Want to get better mileage? Lose the spare tire

I've been eating large quantities of Halloween candy for the past couple of days. I make the same mistake every year; buying my supplies too soon, eating them all and then buying more. Anyway. According to a new study on fatness and fuel consumption, I might be paying at the pump for my indulgence. Because, you see, fat people weigh more, which takes more energy/fuel to move around.
Now maybe it's not very much more gas. If your average obese driver (clocking 12,00o miles/year) were to loose 100 pounds, they would save $40 dollars on gas, say the University of Illinois researchers. Considering that around 30% of American adults are obese, and 70% of the country's 300 million residents are adults (over 20), that leaves us with around 63 million obese American adults. If each one lost 100 pounds (though, admittedly not all obese people have that much to lose), then US annual gas consumption would drop by $2.5 billion dollars (at the current average of $2.20/gallon).

That's a lot of gas! And a lot more CO2! Fat people are causing global warming! If only the obese Americans would drop a few, we could stop this terrifying march towards ecological disaster!

Of course one of the best ways to lose weight is to, um, stop driving your car everywhere and walk or bike. Which would, um, lower your fuel consumption, too. But the math on that is far less fun to compute.

Comments

[Jock Coats]

You have to factor in all the additional methane produced by those rake-skinny bean eating veggies though!

[Gee Strings]

Anna dahhh-link. You have to learn the correct scientific spelling of lose. Like losing sight of grammar. Not like buying your science journalist degree with loose change.

[Anna]

You wouldn't believe how often I mis-spell loose/lose. I've done it in important emails, essays, published articles. And it's not even carelessness. I actually think about it and choose the wrong one..(probably because of words like choose, which sounds like lose, though spelled like loose). Sigh. Thanks.

[Lab Lemming]

Ahh, but have you calculated how much carbon is sequestered in the fat cells of obese people? If they were to exercise, that fat would be burned and released into the atmosphere as CO2.

[sara]

I wonder if there were other variables at play other than just weight. Like maybe the larger people opt to drive to a nearby desination where a fitter, more agile person would have walked? How about time spent driving around the mall parking lot at christmas time looking for a spot that's not a 10 minute walk from the entrance?

[olivier blanchard]

Since shoes wear out faster than car tires, the energy and polution associated with manufacturing the extra walking and running shoes required to help obese people lose extra pounds far outweighs the benefits of helping overweight drivers shed a few pounds.

Drat.

[Karan]

Yeah...blame the environmental problems and the gas crunch on fat people...it can't possibly be caused by any of the gazillion SUV's clogging the roadways could it? Let's also blame fatties for the melting polar ice caps and the decline in the Andean Condor numbers.

[Anne]

Don't forget Karan, they also sold nukes to the axis of evil. AND forged the yellowcake uranium documents...

[Kevin Poskitt]

Oddly related, but in studying for my environmental economics exam I have had to read a study about US expenditures on endangered species, and after trying to understand 3 multiple regressions of various determinants of acceptance onto the endangered species list, cross referenced to expenditures on said species, the man determinant in terms of ranking was actually size! The study found that of the species on the endangered species list, that the most likely way to get on the list and to get the money spent on your preservation was not to be the most endangered, but to be the biggest. Secondary contributors were to be a) a mammal and b)to be the most endangered. Things that don't help are to be a subspecies, and to be an amphibian. So fat people with rare genetic disorders don't fear, you may waste gas, but hello tax payer handouts. And for all you minute blind geckos... sorry old chum, maybe geicko can save you a bundle on your car insurance.

[Kendrick Curtis]

Anne, are you saying that there's an obese agenda? :P

[Megha]

What cracks me up is the concept that a 300 lb fat person in a car is somehow doing more damage than a 125 lb soccer mom with 40lbs of groceries, 2 or 3 30lb kids, and 10-20lbs worth of miscellaneous sports and music equipment meant to get said kids into Harvard in the same car.

[Antipholus Papps]

They could fit service stations with liposuction petrol pumps. Feed the fat back in the tank. Bingo! And the fumes smell like soap.

[Lab Lemming]

Back when I was in college, someone compiled a statistic on how often people drove to gyms to use an exercise bike. I think there were millions of miles involved- certainly far more driving than cycling.

Kinda sad, really.

[MT]

A cartoon in the New Yorker offered as an alternative theory of rising sea levels a conventional picture of obese Americans wading into the water at the beach.

[cadillac]

Blame the parents of a murderer parents for the crime