Farting cows, asthma patients… and now fat people are damaging the environment, says new study

First it was farting cows, and now yet another study into the causes of too much carbon dioxide says obese people are producing more than the average person, helping to harm the planet.

Obesity, the flagship journal of The Obesity Society, has published new research that suggests the increased body mass of people will make it more and more difficult to decrease man-made carbon dioxide emissions entering the atmosphere. 

The study is based on the fact that people who are obese produce more carbon dioxide than people of a ‘normal’ weight. As well as producing more carbon dioxide simply from having a larger body mass, the study claims that overweight people require more food and drink which increases their production, giving in to the stereotype that plus size comes from extra servings. They also require more emissions when they travel, despite not paying more than any other traveler. This all contributes to increased carbon dioxide output. 

Obese people were found to produce an extra 81kg per year of carbon dioxide emissions from having an increased metabolism, an extra 593kg per year from increased food and drink consumption, and an extra 476kg per year from putting more strain on the transportation industry.

The transportation emissions, which are associated not only with transporting obese people themselves but also moving the increased food production, are 14 percent higher than the emissions required by ‘normal’ weight people. 

The Obesity study estimates that obese people put out an extra 700 megatons of carbon dioxide emissions per year, which equates to 1.6 percent of all man-made carbon dioxide emissions. That may not sound like a lot, but it’s 20 percent more than the carbon dioxide emissions from ‘normal’ weight people. 

Obesity broke down what is considered obese and what is considered a ‘normal’ weight.

The standard definition of obesity is having a body mass index greater than or equal to 30 kg/m2, and ‘normal’ weight is having a body mass index of less than 25. 

Concerned with being accused of fat-shaming, the study goes out of its way to warn against stigmatizing obese people based on the findings. 

‘People with obesity already suffer from negative attitudes and discrimination against them, and numerous studies have documented several prevalent stereotypes, e.g. that individuals with obesity are lazy, weak‐willed, lack self‐discipline, have poor willpower, and are noncompliant with weight loss treatments,' the research paper reads. 

It goes on to wag its finger at active people by saying exercising also leads to increased carbon dioxide output. 

At this point, similar studies have asserted that everything from farting cows to people with asthma are contributing to global warming. Nowadays, anything that puts out carbon dioxide is considered a threat to the planet. 

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