The Mysterious Plump/Pump Link Finally Revealed

According to the AP, researchers have determined that not only is America’s increasing weight problem making it harder to be x-rayed; it’s also causing us to get poorer gas mileage because we are getting heavier and that’s causing our cars to burn more gas when we drive them. If you ask me, it’s all those Sumo wrestlers we see out there on the highways and byways driving full size trucks on their way to Sumo matches! Wait, you mean I’m the only one who sees them? Uh-oh. The story also says that at today’s current prices, the extra fuel used adds up to $2.2 billion more spent annually. Aside from the fuel we waste according to this theory, that’s money we Americans could use on things other than gas like fast food and sugary soda.

Whether this data will be used to motivate Americans to lose more weight remains to be seen, especially with fuel prices continuing to drop. Maybe it will spur us to buy lighter vehicles, which I guess is like weight loss for cars. We should begin selling autos by people’s weight class so that a balance between passenger weight and vehicle weight can be achieved across the board, leading to better fuel use. For example, the highest weight class of driver would be required to buy vehicles made of aluminum foil and the lightest weight class of driver would have to buy lead-framed cars. Those that would be restricted to the aluminum class of vehicle may be a bit intimidated by driving such light cars, but heck, we sent astronauts to the moon in a lunar spacecraft that’s wall weren’t much thicker and they all survived. Granted, they wouldn’t have survived if something the size of a pebble had collided with their spacecraft, but that didn’t happen. It just supports the theory that you should always be aware of your surroundings when operating a moving vehicle of any kind.

On the other end of the scale (so to speak) would be the lighter folks in lead-based vehicles. A major portion of the lightest class of drivers would be teenagers, who generally are skinnier, smaller framed and have better metabolisms. Unfortunately, they are also much more prone to getting into accidents. For them, driving lead vehicles (again, I mean lead as in the heaviest of metals, not let me lead you into battle) would also be a form of protection. Of course, the damage they might do to everything else they’ll run into will suffer, but we’ll achieve equality among the all important driver weight to vehicle weight ratio and spend less money on gas. We can spend some of those savings on repairing all the things completely decimated by the reckless younger drivers in their lead laden tanks. To sum it all up, heavier folks in lighter cars and lighter folks in heavier cars equal less fuel consumption, I think. To be honest, I’ve rewritten this thing three times today and now have the mental capacity of a wet, waterlogged kitchen sponge.

It’s interesting that the report blames the extra gas being used on overweight Americans and not the increasing number of bigger SUVs on the road that get poor fuel mileage. If we don’t force heavier Americans into lighter vehicles and lighter Americans into heavier vehicles to even out our fuel consumption, it’ll be good news for all the SUV owners out there. They can continue driving Hummers and F350s and deflect their overly high gas consumption onto heavier Americans who don’t eat healthy or exercise. Awesome! I’ve always wanted a ridiculously large mammoth vehicle that gets about 4 miles per gallon.

When you get down to the bottom of all of this, I guess we needn’t worry about our fuel being unleaded anymore; it’s the food that needs to be.