The psalmist this Sunday praises God for having been “knit in my mother’s womb” and having a frame that was “wonderfully made.” Many frames these days are carrying around more weight than is good for them—or the planet. The increasing levels of obesity worldwide could have the same impact on global resources as an extra one billion people, researchers said.

Investigators from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine estimated the total weight of people on the planet and found the U.S. had the highest average. Although having only 6 percent of the global population, the U.S. accounts for more than a third of the world’s obese population. By contrast, while Asia has 61 percent of the global population, it only accounts for 13 percent of the weight of the world due to obesity.

Using World Health Organization data from 2005, the scientists worked out that the average global body weight was 137 pounds. But there were huge regional differences. In North America, the average was 178 pounds, while in Asia it was 127 pounds.

As one of the authors of the paper, Prof. Ian Roberts, put it: “When people think about environmental sustainability, they immediately focus on population. Actually, when it comes down to it, it’s not how many mouths there are to feed, it’s how much flesh there is on the planet.

“If every country in the world had the same level of fatness that we see in the U.S., in weight terms that would be like an extra billion people of world average body mass,” said Roberts. But he cautioned against finger-pointing. “One of the problems with definitions of obesity is that it fosters a ‘them and us’ ideal. Actually, we’re all getting fatter.”

Roberts said that the increasing level of obesity is indicative of the car-culture growing worldwide. “One of the most important determinants of average body mass index is motor vehicle gas consumption per capita . . . people eat but they move very little because they drive everywhere.”

Source: An article by Matt McGrath for BBC World Service