Fat Lights the World

Sometimes, I think people have too much time on their hands!  A few years ago I read the results of a "study" in which the researchers used health surveys to estimate how many people in the USA were over-weight, and by how much. They figured out how many pounds of excess body fat this added up to, and calculated how much energy it would take to pile on that fat and maintain it for a year: what it took to grow and transport the food and prepare it, for example. They converted this to the equivalent amount of electricity. That many kilowatt hours per year would have provided all the residential lighting needs for Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, and 6 other major cities! (I no longer remember which other cities, but the situation would be worse by now, anyhow.)