(WS) Weight of the world
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 23 June 2012
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How fat could the global population become? Plus, Angela Saini considers whether statistics could settle the disputed result of the world title fight between boxers Manny Pacquiao and Timothy Bradley. This programme was first broadcast on the BBC World Service.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | There are dozens of different podcasts now available from the BBC, including news, documentaries, |
| 0:07.0 | science, business, arts and sport. The details of the more go to BBCWorldService.com-slage-podcasts. |
| 0:17.0 | You've downloaded more or less an oasis of common sense in the desert of innumeracy. |
| 0:23.0 | In this week's episode we're taking on the weight of the world and judging a well-to-weight boxing match. |
| 0:29.0 | Hello, welcome to more or less on the BBCWorldService. For the next 10 minutes we'll be picking apart the numbers in the news. |
| 0:37.0 | I'm Angela Saini, standing in for a regular presenter Tim Halford. |
| 0:41.0 | This week we enter the ring for a statistical boxing match. |
| 0:45.0 | But first, and this is a delicate question with the entire human population mind just coming over here for a moment. |
| 0:53.0 | Okay, we're just going to measure your weight. Could you get on to these scales for me? |
| 1:00.0 | Just there. Oh, looks like we're heavier than ever. |
| 1:05.0 | According to a study published this week in the journal BioMed Central Public Health, |
| 1:10.0 | it's not only because there are more of us. Global adult human biomass are combined weight. |
| 1:16.0 | Now stands at around 287 million metric tons and 15 million tons of that is excess being carried by the overweight. |
| 1:27.0 | The problem for all of us is that like every creature in the animal kingdom, the heavier we are, the more energy we need. |
| 1:35.0 | Leading the league table of heaviest nations is the US. |
| 1:39.0 | The authors argue that if every country had the same body mass index distribution as there, |
| 1:44.0 | the weight of the world would increase by 58 million tons, the equivalent of nearly a billion averagely sized adults. |
| 1:53.0 | So, are they right? Could the rest of the world go down the same road as the US? |
| 1:57.0 | It's a theory that certainly got lots of headlines around the world. |
| 2:01.0 | Well, according to Nick Massey Taylor, a professor of human population biology and health at Cambridge University, |
| 2:08.0 | the US is not necessarily a good model for where we're heading. |
| 2:12.0 | This is the most unlikely scenario, because it's sure most untrue that populations will in fact be going like that. |
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