Nerdy Science Blog

Australia has been titled world’s most obese nation on Thursday.  A study titled “Australia’s Future Fat Bomb” from Baker Heart Institute reported that Australians are more obese than Americans.  14,000 adult Australians’ height and weight checks are collected in 2005 for this study.  It is also predicted 700,000 extra heart-related hospital admissions will be mushroomed in the next 20 years due to the obesity and around 125,000 people would die because of the heart disease.  It is advised that government can subsidize gym memberships.

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David Schlundt and his colleagues, who are Vanderbilt University psychologist made a very interesting connection.

“We found that when weight goes up, seatbelt use goes down,” Schlundt, associate professor of psychology and assistant professor of medicine, said. “This is an additional public health problem associated with obesity that was not on the radar screen. We hope these new findings will help promote awareness campaigns to encourage people to use their seatbelts and that additional resources, like seatbelt extenders, will be made more readily available.”

Yes, the more obese you are, the less frequent you will use seatbelt. I don’t know if all vehicles have a standard seatbelt length, but I do notice sometimes some seatbelts of certain cars are shorter (maybe it’s just my imagination). What really matters is on the plane, different airlines company do have different seatbelt length. When the obesity group (I used to be one) taking the flight, the seatbelt is totally suffocating my stomach. This reminds me of Chinese dumpling (made of glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves).

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