Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Virginia Commonwealth University found that today's overweight American drivers pump nearly 940 million more gallons of gas into their vehicles than drivers in 1960, largely because today's driver weighs about two dozen pounds more, on average.
The researchers calculated the extra impact modern obese drivers have on the oil economy by using federal statistics to determine how much fuel 1960s drivers -- as well as drivers from other years -- would have used if they were driving in 2003.
"We basically looked at the average weights of people for different time periods, and then we took those people and we put them in ... today's cars with today's driving habits," said Sheldon H. Jacobson, a co-author of the study and professor of computer science at Illinois.
Jacobson, along with co-author and Virginia Commonwealth professor Laura McLay, factored in variables such as differing passenger weights and ages, and found that today's obese drivers spend $2.8 billion more on gas each year, if gas is priced at $3 per gallon.
"Every additional gallon of fuel is coming from a foreign source, and it's expensive," Jacobson said.
McLay estimates that the extra gas today's drivers are consuming each year to carry around overweight passengers adds up to roughly three days' worth of what the United States currently consumes.
Jacobson's and McLay's study proves that "our nation's hunger for food and our hunger for oil aren't independent of each other," Jacobson said. "Beyond public health, being overweight has many other socioeconomic implications."
###