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.
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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.
