Where? Data to help calculate total food and water consumed in lifetime
December 6, 2016 11:00 AM Subscribe
My birthday is on it's way. I'd like to calculate the general amount of food I've consumed in weight and the amount of water I've drunk in gallons within my current lifespan
You have these data.
Measure yourself for a few days. Get a daily average. Multiply by 365. Then multiply by whatever number you expect to appear on your birthday cake.
posted by entropone at 11:37 AM on December 6, 2016
Measure yourself for a few days. Get a daily average. Multiply by 365. Then multiply by whatever number you expect to appear on your birthday cake.
posted by entropone at 11:37 AM on December 6, 2016
I'm guessing this data is somewhere in the NHANES data from the CDC, but my initial quick glance didn't find, say, a handy chart of the age/height/weight correlated to consumption. If you poke in there you can eat least find averages for different ages, though, likely.
posted by ldthomps at 12:17 PM on December 6, 2016
posted by ldthomps at 12:17 PM on December 6, 2016
Best answer: These kind of things are really really messy to calculate. It's possible I messed up unit conversion or math so keep that in mind too. Take all of these numbers as wild guesses.
I'm going to pretend that you were never a child; children eat and drink less than an adult. I'm going to pretend that your water/calorie consumption for your entire life is constant.
Let's say you're a 50 year old man that is 5' 10" and weighs 195lbs (weight and height are about average for the US).
A few papers and claculators say you'd need about 3.5-4.5 liters a day. If you do some kind of very sweaty activity you might be closer to 4.5, if you don't probably you're closer to 3.5. Let's say 4 liters or 1 gallon. So 50*365*4 = 73000 liters or 18250 gallons lifetime.
Ok, so food is harder because calories per gram (energy density) differs a lot between pure fat (9 calories/gram) and pure sugar (4 calories/gram). Also food has fiber and water and other stuff; which makes it hard to figure out how many calories there are per gram of average food.
Using one of the many calorie calculators and assuming a light level of activity you would need to eat about 2200 calories per day to mantain weight (given the above height/weight/age).
Average energy density of food is kind of hard to come by, but this paper suggests a high-fat diet might be 1.5 calories/gram and a low fat diet might be 0.69 calories/gram. So given our 2200 calories a day, 2200/1.5 = 1467 grams of food per day for a high fat diet or 2200/0.69 = 3188 grams of food per day for a high low fat diet. Let's average our two numbers to get 2327 grams or 5.1 lbs of food per day. 50*356*5.1 = 42467 kilos or 90780 lbs of food lifetime.
posted by gregr at 2:37 PM on December 6, 2016
I'm going to pretend that you were never a child; children eat and drink less than an adult. I'm going to pretend that your water/calorie consumption for your entire life is constant.
Let's say you're a 50 year old man that is 5' 10" and weighs 195lbs (weight and height are about average for the US).
A few papers and claculators say you'd need about 3.5-4.5 liters a day. If you do some kind of very sweaty activity you might be closer to 4.5, if you don't probably you're closer to 3.5. Let's say 4 liters or 1 gallon. So 50*365*4 = 73000 liters or 18250 gallons lifetime.
Ok, so food is harder because calories per gram (energy density) differs a lot between pure fat (9 calories/gram) and pure sugar (4 calories/gram). Also food has fiber and water and other stuff; which makes it hard to figure out how many calories there are per gram of average food.
Using one of the many calorie calculators and assuming a light level of activity you would need to eat about 2200 calories per day to mantain weight (given the above height/weight/age).
Average energy density of food is kind of hard to come by, but this paper suggests a high-fat diet might be 1.5 calories/gram and a low fat diet might be 0.69 calories/gram. So given our 2200 calories a day, 2200/1.5 = 1467 grams of food per day for a high fat diet or 2200/0.69 = 3188 grams of food per day for a high low fat diet. Let's average our two numbers to get 2327 grams or 5.1 lbs of food per day. 50*356*5.1 = 42467 kilos or 90780 lbs of food lifetime.
posted by gregr at 2:37 PM on December 6, 2016
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by LKWorking at 11:15 AM on December 6, 2016