Overweight Americans Add 1 Billion Gallons of Gas per Year

STUDY SAYS OVERWEIGHT AMERICANS ADD NEARLY 1 BILLION MORE GALLONS OF GAS CONSUMPTION A YEAR

Here's a novel gas-saving tip: Lose some weight.

That's the implication of a new study that says Americans are burning nearly one billion more gallons of gasoline each year than they did in 1960 because of their expanding waistlines, reports Lindsay Tanner of the Associated Press. "Simply put, more weight in the car means lower gas mileage," says Tanner. "Using recent gas prices of $2.20 a gallon, that translates to about $2.2 billion more spent on gas each year."

"The bottom line is that our hunger for food and our hunger for oil are not independent. There is a relationship between the two," University of Illinois researcher and study co-author Sheldon Jacobson reports. "If a person reduces the weight in their car, either by removing excess baggage, carrying around less weight in their trunk, or yes, even losing weight, they will indeed see a drop in their fuel consumption."

Jacobson, an industrial engineer, conducted the research with Laura McLay, a doctoral student in his Champaign-Urbana lab who now works at Virginia Commonwealth University. "They estimated that more than 39 million gallons of fuel are used each year for every additional pound of passenger weight, reports Tanner.

The same effect has evidently been reported for airplanes. According to Tanner, research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that heavy fliers have contributed to higher fuel costs for airlines. "The obesity rate among U.S. adults doubled from 1987 to 2003, from about 15 percent to more than 30 percent. Also, the average weight for American men was 191 pounds in 2002 and 164 pounds for women, about 25 pounds heavier than in 1960, government figures show. The study's conclusions are based on those weight figures and Americans' 2003 driving habits, involving roughly 223 million cars and light trucks nationwide."

The study's findings will appear in the October-December issue of The Engineering Economist, a peer-reviewed journal published by the American Society of Engineering Education and the Institute of Industrial Engineers.

BACK SEAT DRIVING - November 1, 2006