Cut the Fat to Save Some Gas: Jacobson Shares Research on Obesity with Doctors

8/21/2013 By Sneha Shukla, CS @ ILLINOIS

CS Professor Sheldon Jacobson visited Carle Hospital to show how computer science can be applied to obesity research.

Written by By Sneha Shukla, CS @ ILLINOIS

Take these diet pills, consider a vegetarian diet, or maybe opt for liposuction? The term obesity is used to categorize individuals with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 and over. Once a person is in this obese category, health risks such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and cancer become more prevalent. This makes body fat reduction an important goal in the health community and the central idea in CS Professor Sheldon Jacobson’s latest research.

Sheldon Jacobson
Sheldon Jacobson
Sheldon Jacobson

On June 18, Carle Foundation Hospital in Urbana invited Jacobson, who specializes in the field of operations research, to share his research on obesity and its effects. Thirty physicians and members of the community gathered at the Pollard Auditorium at Carle to listen to Jacobson’s presentation.

“Most of us have a need for speed and a need to maximize efficiency, which explains why we use cars. Well, here’s some food for thought. No pun intended,” he said.

Between 1960 and 2000, the national average weight of an American adult had gained an average of 24 pounds. Those extra 24 pounds accounted for a 17.5% increase in national obesity rates as reported by the CDC and are being carried in millions of automobiles every day. Jacobson’s research shows a strong correlation between growing obesity and extra fuel consumption.

“It’s simple physics. If you carry a bowling ball in the back of your car for a year, you’ll consume more fuel,“ he said.

This extra gas consumed from the shift in national weight averages isn’t a negligible amount- it totals to one billion gallons a year.

This implies that extra weight in a car can lead to an increase in fuel consumption. Yet does the reverse hold true? It appears so. Jacobson estimates that if everyone drove an average of 1 mile less per day then 5 million fewer people may be categorized as obese.

In an interview, Jacobson made one concept very clear: at the personal level, weight gain and weight loss is a tradeoff between the amount of energy spent and the amount of energy consumed. Jacobson’s recent research, conducted with visiting lecturer Douglas M. King and graduate student Banafsheh Behzad from the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering, estimates that if each licensed driver in the United States drives 1 mile less on average every day, the associated reduction in the national average BMI would be 0.21 kg/m2 after 6 years. Or instead, if each adult eats 100 less calories per day the associated reduction in the national average BMI would be 0.16 kg/m2 in 3 years. This reduction could remove millions of people from the obese category, reduce fuel consumption and even extend to reduce healthcare costs by billions of dollars annual.
 
Jacobson’s research was first published in 2006 in The Engineering Economist. The last seven years have seen the medical community and media outlets like MSNBC, CNBC, Reader’s Digest, and Cancer Today apply and publicize his research. After all, the cost of fuel and effects of obesity create an issue that moves beyond just the individual and extends to national economic costs.

“People in the medical community are recognizing that transportation may be a factor in public health issues,” said Jacobson. “In fact, a number of agencies are starting to recognize this as a factor even though we have recognized this for many years. So far, we have published four papers on the topic, and we have another couple of papers looking at the different impacts of obesity and transport.”

So when you map your next errand, reconsider using your car. It may just save you some money and trips to the doctor.


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This story was published August 21, 2013.