If the world’s population keeps getting fatter it could have a serious impact on the environment and the planet’s resources. That’s the warning from researchers who say the energy needs of people rise as their waistbands expand.
A new report, called ‘The weight of nations: an estimation of adult human biomass’, warns increasing population fatness could have the same implications for world food energy demands as an extra half a billion people living on the earth.
Using data from the United Nations and World Health Organization, the researchers estimated the adult human population weighs in at 287 million tonnes, 15 million of which is due to the overweight and 3.5 million due to obesity.
Professor Ian Roberts, who led the research at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicines (LSHTM) said: “Everyone accepts that population growth threatens global environmental sustainability – our study shows that population fatness is also a major threat. Unless we tackle both population and fatness our chances are slim.”
With the world’s population at more than seven billion and set to rise, policy makers need to take increasing mass into account, suggests the report, which was published in BioMed Central’s open access journal BMC Public Health this week.
June 21st, 2012 at 3:16 pm
Even a child could have derived this obvious correlation.
Report comment Report commentJune 22nd, 2012 at 1:01 am
Professor Roberts and his associates are correct based on my 37 years of research on how increasing height and body weight are harmful to our health, longevity and survival as a race. My findings are documented in 40 peer-reviewed papers and seven books. See Human Body Size and the Laws of Scaling: Physiological, Performance, Growth, Longevity, and Ecological Ramifications, Nova Science Publishers, NY, 2007. The increase in human size has a major impact on our food, water and energy needs. It also consumes more natural resources and promotes water, land and air pollution. Also see http://www.humanbodysize.com
A recent paper, A New Study Of Sardinian Men Finds Height Is A Factor In Longevity” was published last month in the journal, Biodemography and Social Biology. The findings in this paper support 12 longevity and 20 mortality studies that previously found that increased height and weight promote chronic disease and reduce longevity.
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