Why is eating vegetables more efficent, in terms of energy, than eating meat?

Answer 1

Because plants are autotrophs that make their food by using the sun's energy. Only 2% of the sun's energy is absorbed by plants and even during that process, energy is lost (as heat when the plant is producing food). When an animal eats that food from the plant (herbivore), 90% of that energy is lost during the transfer of energy and from the metabolic processes that are used to digest the plant food (as heat). When that animal is eaten by a carnivore (such as a carnivore like ourselves) there is energy lost in the process (about 90% again lost due to the metabolic breaking down of this food).

To actually calculate the energy you receive, you can take the total energy received by the plant, then take 10% of that (the 90% is what the herbivore lost during the energy transfer) and then take 10% of that value you just calculated. Basically, when you are eating meat from an animal that is higher up in the food chain, he has to eat a lot of different animals below him to keep his metabolism going (because of the energy lost during the numerous transfers from animal eating animal eating animal). There is a limit to how long a food chain can be because of the energy lost during the transfer process!!

If you eat food such as plants (veggies and fruits) you will receive more energy (per unit of mass) than if you were to eat the same equivalent in meat. You are reducing the energy lost during the transfer by cutting down the links in the chain. SO it's more efficient to eat plants than meats.

Another interesting point---if the entire world were to become vegetarians, we would be able to supply food for around 10 billion people. I believe if the world consisted of purely carnivores only 2 or 3 billion could be fed. And consider this: meat production is a very costly process, as well as being wasteful.

You don't have to become a vegetarian or nething, but perhaps cut down on your meat consumption would be a good idea.

Answer 2

It isn't. Meat is much more easily digested and
contains more concentrated sources of energy
than vegetables. Militant vegetarians would have
you believe otherwise, but they are wrong.

Animals that rely entirely on vegetation for energy
show the effects clearly in the structure of their
digestive tracts. An herbivore's gut is much longer
and more complex than that of a carnivore because the food is so much harder to digest. The metabolism of the vegetarian is slower and their
level of activity lower than a carnivore's because it
is so much harder for them to get enough energy
for strenuous activity.

For specific requirements, such as quick energy
(sugars), certain vitamins, etc. some specific plant
source may be better than most meats, but, in
general, the carnivore has the much easier time of
it when it comes to obtaining nutrient, provided it
can make a prey capture often enough. Human
beings have an intermediate type gut and dentition
which indicates that they evolved as omnivores.

Answer 3

I think what you are asking about is the biopyramid or food pyramid.

This is a concept in biology that works like this. Whenever some energy gets transferred from one organism to another, quite a bit of the energy is lost or wasted. Often it is as much as 90% of the energy, so this is sometimes called the 90% rule.

This makes sense if you think about it. Maybe you weight 100 pounds... but you have eaten many 100s of pounds of food. When you eat 1 pound of food, you dont gain a pound of weight in your body....

OK, so why is eating grain (wheat, corn, rice) more energy efficient than eating meat (cow,pig, goat)?

Simple, suppose you had 1000 pounds of corn. You could eat the corn and it would keep you going for quite a long time. That would be enough to keep you going for nearly a year! Or, you feed the corn to a pig, then eat the pig. But 1000 pounds of food would only grow a small pig. So when you killed the pig you might only get 100 pounds of meat. That wouldnt last very long - only a month or so. OK, so which is more energy efficient, eating the corn, or eating the pig?

ps it is just nonsense to say that humans shouldn't eat meat or weren't intended to eat meat. All humans in primitive societies eat meat whenever they can get it. And some human cultures have survived for thousands of years almost totally on meat (like the inuits (eskimos)). Vegetables do NOT contain more nutrients than meat. People who eat strictly vegetable diets have to be very careful to eat a wide variety of food or they get deficiency diseases from lack of amino acids like lysine...

Answer 4

We, humans, are not supposed to eat meat at all.
Our teeth, stomach, etc. are not well prepared to digest meat.

Our body is designed to digest fruits and vegetables, we get the more from them in favor of our health than from meat.

Answer 5

nicely it relies upon, meat is a huge source of fairly some nutricional values which includes protein and so on.. inspite of the incontrovertible fact that it may desire to be greater reliable to digest reckoning on the beef, making your physique artwork greater reliable to take the ability out of it. there is plenty greater energy in meat to boot. vegetables contain numerous vitamines yet for them to be hassle-free to digest you could desire to cook dinner them.

Answer 6

Vegetables have more nutrients and vitamins than meat. Meat is good for protein, but it also has fat in it. Vegetables, especially in their raw form, have absolutely no fat.

I could go more in depth than this, but I doubt you need a sleep aid.

Answer 7

I'm going to take a guess but I'm going to say in digestion, meat is more complex to digest with the different minerals and stuff in it than vegitables do.