The Country that Ate the World

Jennifer Hudson: Now eating for one, with the help of Weight Watchers."Tackling population fatness" is the call to action that concludes an ingenious bit of number crunching by three European statisticians, including two from the World Health Organization.

Working on their own time British and Swiss mathematicians figured out how much the planet's population weighs (earth's biomass is 287 million tons); which citizenry tilts the biomass scales (the average North American weighs 177.8 pounds); and which nationalities are models of terrestrial muscle tone (the people of Asia weigh an average 127.2 pounds each.)

One sad stat: It takes 12.2 American adults to make a ton, versus 20.2 Bangladeshis.

We thought height might have something to do with North America's tonnage, but the researchers beat us to the punch; they looked at body mass index or BMI (the ratio of height to weight, a measure of fleshiness) and found once again that North America, specifically the U.S., tops the scales.  The average BMI in America was 28.7 (Japan's was 22.9). A BMI greater than 25 is considered overweight; greater than 30 is considered obese.

If everybody on the planet had the BMI of an average American there would be a global biomass increase of 20%; which would require food for an additional 473 million adults.

Perhaps most distressing is the amount of food required to maintain America's fatness. The researchers write, "In the United States alone, the energy required to maintain overweight biomass corresponds to the energy requirements of 23 million adults of world average body mass."

Which is to say that in order to stay fat Americans are eating enough food for an additional 23 million people. Perhaps the new Weight Watchers mantra should be...time to let someone else have a bite.

Click here for a list of the 5 heaviest countries, and average calories consumed.