In volume, do we breathe more oxygen or eat more food per day?

Question

Let's see some well thought out guesses and hypotheses!

Answer 1

In volume we breath more air than the volume of food we eat. The air is about 20% oxygen.
By volume, I think we still breath in more O2 than the total of food.

Answer 2

Oxygen

Answer 3

First let’s assume two things,
Firstly, assume all the “food” we eat is sucrose sugar, C12H22O11.
Secondly, assume that all the food / sugar we eat is digested and the energy gained from it is used that same day, so there is no energy deficit or surplus (due to more / less food eaten than needed) at the end of the day.

If this is the case, then all of that sugar we are eating gets combusted, slowly, into Carbon Dioxide and water during the digestion process and the energy given off goes into allowing us to do what we want during the day.

The balanced chemical reaction for the combustion of sucrose is,
C12H22O11+12 O2 --> 11 H2O+12 CO2
For every 1 mole of sucrose combusted, 12 moles of Oxygen gas are required.

1 mole of Sucrose has a mass of about 342.3 grams.
Sucrose has a density of about 1.587 grams per mL.
Therefore, 1 mole of Sucrose has a volume of about 215.7 mL or about .215 Liters.

For every 1 mole of an ideal gas at STP, the gas has a volume of about 22.4 Liters.
If we assume that Oxygen is an ideal gas, then 12 moles of Oxygen gas will have a volume of about 269 Liters.

So for every .215 Liters of Sucrose (“food”) we consume, we must breathe in about 269 Liters of Oxygen.
Also remember that “air” is only about 20% Oxygen, so we must breathe in 5 times this volume of O2 to get the volume of required air.

Clearly, we breathe in more than we eat.
There is a dramatic difference between the volumes of “food” and “Oxygen” consumed per day…several orders of magnitude difference.

If you factor in the fact that a lot of the real “food” we eat every day contains a good percentage of water in it (especially the liquids we consume) and that it can have lower densities than that of sucrose, it will raise the volume of food consumed significantly.
However, we are still talking about a difference of orders of magnitude here. 1350 Liters of air is quite a lot and it comparable to the volume of a box measuring 3.6 feet on each side (3.6 * 3.6 * 3.6 = 46.7 ft^2) which is about equal to 1350 L.

Answer 4

We breath more than we eat. We breath 24 hrs a day, and only eat probably less than 1.

Answer 5

definitely breathe. in total time actually spent ''eating'' a day is probably 1.5 to 2 hours.but we breath 24hrs a day 365 days a year until we die no taking into consideration holding your breath.heck we breath while we sleep but only sleepwalkers can truly eat while they sleep.

Answer 6

breathe. i dont eat but 2-3 small meals a day....but im breathing of every second of the day

Answer 7

breathe more oxygen

Answer 8

good question. I don't think you can measure the volume of oxygen though.

Answer 9

breathe

Answer 10

i breathe more