Another Reason Not to Diet: Global Warming

I’ve joked over the years that Al Gore’s expanding girth was merely his personal, one-man carbon sequestration project.  Now the problem with humor like this is that it runs the risk of coming true, and then you’re defeated as a satirist.

Sure enough, dieting contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and water pollution.  As reported in EurekaAlert, a British Medical Journal study finds:

The authors show that losing 10 kilograms of fat requires 29 kilograms of oxygen to be inhaled and that this metabolic process produces 28 kilograms of carbon dioxide and 11 kilograms of water. . .

If you follow the atoms in 10 kilograms of fat as they are ‘lost’, 8.4 of those kilograms are exhaled as carbon dioxide through the lungs. The remaining 1.6 kilograms becomes water, which may be excreted in urine, faeces, sweat, breath, tears and other bodily fluids, the authors report.

So another reason to stop exercising and load up on donuts and cheeseburgers instead.

Meanwhile, I wonder what are the greenhouse gas implications of releasing your inner chakra?  In three, two . . .

(Hat tip: JZ)

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