By Rebecca DiFede — If you ask any third grade science class what the essentials of life are, they are going to tell you that breathing is pretty high up on the list. They may even name it first, no doubt after taking in a nervous breath of their own.
For those unfamiliar with the process of respiration (I’m looking at you, zombies) let me explain. You breathe in oxygen, it goes into your lungs and is pumped through your blood stream by your heart, and then when you exhale, the oxygen has been turned into the bi-product of your breath, Carbon Dioxide, or CO2.
However despite this irrefutable piece of common knowledge, scientists in Denmark have just released a study that causes many of us to put our heads in our hands. Even though CO2 is a basic part of something we do several thousand times a day—indeed, a gas essential to life itself on this planet — these scientists are now claiming that one of the reasons people are getting fatter is that there is just too much CO2 in our bodies.
I’m sorry, come again? Are you telling me that not only should I drink more water, exercise more, and cut out junk food, but that now merely breathing is making me fat? How exactly am I supposed to run on the treadmill without exhaling? Unless the point is to die, at which point I suppose I would be skinnier.
To say that this study is patently ridiculous would be an insult to your intelligence. The reasoning in this study is as flimsy as the claims that Al Gore made about the dire need to reduce carbon emissions…as he flew cross country in his private jet.
The global warming fanatics will use any excuse to further entrance us into their cult-like following, but this time they have gone a little far. Asking us to recycle more and use less water, fine. Reducing our carbon footprint by making cars more efficient, okay. But it’s going just a wee bit far to say that now carbon dioxide is making us fat.
I am surprised that Michele Obama hasn’t already roped this study in as support for her “Let’s Move” campaign, an on-going battle to force people to eat healthier because she said so.
This is not the first time the government has attempted to make regulations governing our every action based on barely-considered-coherent evidence. The recently attempted bulb ban for example, intending to fill every room in our house with “new and improved” light bulbs, which were filled with mercury — a substance that might not make you fat, but will definitely help make you dead. Which, I think we can all agree, is worse than being fat.
The Danish study is based on a 22-year experiment where people are followed wherever they go, and observed for indicators of things contributing to their weight gain or loss. Apparently the findings were that the places with the highest concentration of CO2 gained the most weight, and even those thin participants seemed to gain proportionately the same amount of weight as their fatter counterparts. “There must be something in the air” reasoned Lars-Georg Hersoug, the main, mad scientist behind the study.
One of the main things the study says contributes to weight gain is that CO2 affects our blood by making it more acidic, and therefore somehow making us want to eat more. They then go on to say that drinks like beer and soda, which are carbonated, are causing us to be fat. But not from the high calories mind you, but the evil, evil carbon dioxide.
But as anyone who has ever drank a few beers or sodas knows, drinking all of the carbonated liquid makes you less hungry. It fills you up, and simulates the feeling of haven already eaten. Which is why your mom never let you have soda before dinner (and if she did, she was clearly trying to make you fat). So riddle us that one, science.
And after dropping this major bomb on us, what do the researchers in Denmark suggest is the proper way to combat, as they call it, “the CO2 effect”?
Exercise and vegetables. Seriously.
So, wait a minute here. You’re telling us that the air we exhale is making us fat, and the only solutions you have are eating and running, both of which require excessive breathing and possible consumption of more horrifyingly dangerous CO2?
Well, not all questions can be answered just yet. Apparently the study still has a ways to go, as one of the researchers commented, “…there is one problem: the obesity epidemic has developed quite irregularly in time and place, even in a small country such as Denmark, and only a part of the population is affected even though we all breathe the same air.”
So after admitting that extremely crucial fact, that not everyone in Denmark is bursting at the seams because of (newly discovered) excess CO2 levels, I believe that this study has been officially debunked.
Perhaps in a few years things will change (or they’ll make up lots more studies about how it has definitely changed), but for now, carbon dioxide is about as responsible for making you fat as the color of your dining room table.
But hey, you have to admit, that rich mahogany finish does sort of remind you of chocolate cake, doesn’t it?
Rebecca DiFede is a contributing editor to Americans for Limited Government.
