"Obese and overweight people require more fuel to transport them and the food they eat, and the problem will worsen as the population literally swells in size,"
a team at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine says. This adds to food shortages and higher energy prices, say the School's researchers, Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts, who wrote about this subject in the most recent issue of the medical journal
Lancet
.At least 400 million adults worldwide are obese. The World Health Organization (WHO) projects that by the year 2015,
2.3 billion
adults will be overweight and more than 700 million will be obese. The researchers calculate that these fat and obese people require 18% more energy than someone with a stable Body Mass Index (BMI).Is the next step giving tax breaks to those who are thin and fit?
