This seems like a dubious line of reasoning. It’s like making the claim that if you eat moss your net water consumption is lower than if you eat the leaves off an oak tree because of all the water it takes to grow. I mean I guess it’s sort of true but it’s also sorta weird. The argument is basically eat closer to the bottom of the food chain and the younger the better, but I don’t think you’re going to be happy if people eat more puppies and veal…
So it’s about efficiency. A given organism is going to have a particular conversion ratio in terms of how much mass/calories/nutrients whatever you’re measuring it has to take in to increase it’s own content an equivalent amount.
Since the vast quantity of food consumed by animals goes into energy rather than body mass they’re very inefficient. Particularly larger creatures like cows which “waste” (obviously not from the cow’s perspective) that energy breathing, moving, pumping blood, digesting, feeling and so on.
Infants are probably less efficient, as pregnancy is very stressful biologically.
This seems like a dubious line of reasoning. It’s like making the claim that if you eat moss your net water consumption is lower than if you eat the leaves off an oak tree because of all the water it takes to grow. I mean I guess it’s sort of true but it’s also sorta weird. The argument is basically eat closer to the bottom of the food chain and the younger the better, but I don’t think you’re going to be happy if people eat more puppies and veal…
So it’s about efficiency. A given organism is going to have a particular conversion ratio in terms of how much mass/calories/nutrients whatever you’re measuring it has to take in to increase it’s own content an equivalent amount.
Since the vast quantity of food consumed by animals goes into energy rather than body mass they’re very inefficient. Particularly larger creatures like cows which “waste” (obviously not from the cow’s perspective) that energy breathing, moving, pumping blood, digesting, feeling and so on.
Infants are probably less efficient, as pregnancy is very stressful biologically.