Eating A Mango In London Defies The Laws Of Nature — And We Don’t Even Think About It
A while back I read this article in the Economist that discussed whether polar bears should hunt snow geese. It makes the argument that unless the bear kills the goose within 12 seconds, the calories burnt while hunting and killing the goose outweigh the calories gained from eating it and therefore geese are not a good diet for polar bears, at least not if the bears want to survive. It struck me that I had never even thought about this relationship when I eat. If anything, I think about the opposite problem: how can I exercise enough to ‘get rid’ of the calories I eat.
Once I made the effort to connect the dots it was shockingly obvious that humans have a lifestyle that defies the laws of nature. To pick a random example: I can eat a mango in London without having to swim to Mexico or walk to Pakistan to get it. If I wanted to walk from London to Islamabad and back to get a mango I’d burn around 700,000 calories. Eating a mango provides about 140 calories, so I’d need to eat 5,000 mangos to make my trip worthwhile. These numbers vary depending on your weight, the speed you walk, etc, but I think you get the point: this sounds absolutely ridiculous. However, if I buy a mango in a supermarket in London it must have come here somehow. Given that it probably traveled at a faster speed than I’d be able to walk, it required even more energy for it to get here than I’d have burnt. And this is only the energy needed to transport it. The calculation doesn’t yet include the energy to run the supermarket and many other things. So by eating that mango I defy the laws of nature. It is amazing!
Humans didn’t ‘invent’ power generation. Our bodies have always been able to convert food into energy, which — like all good animals — we use to move around, stay warm, eat more food, and reproduce. But once humans discovered ways to deliberately generate energy (and later electricity) from fossil fuels we started to be able to do things that are absolutely incredible. Like cooking and heating our homes. And then driving and flying, which allow us to move much faster than our bodies could ever move with the energy we can generate from food. Or like transporting things to the other side of the world to enjoy anything we want at any time and wherever we are.
Our ability to use fossil fuels to generate heat, electricity and impulsion allows us to live in ways that are absolutely incredible
What’s crazy about this is that despite practically being a miracle, power generation has become so normal for us that it may well be the most under appreciated concept of our generation. Not being able to generate power means no driving, no electric light, no heat in our homes, no WiFi (!), no synthetic clothes and no food as we know it. Power is like air and water for us, but it obviously doesn’t occur naturally like oxygen does.
When was the last time you’ve appreciated it or even thought about it in this way?
There is lots of talk about reducing our carbon footprints and this topic almost has a bitter taste to it now. I’d like to talk about something else — how amazing it is that by emitting carbon we are able to do lots of things that really “should be impossible”.
I haven’t stopped eating mangos, but after thinking about this I do eat less of them and appreciate them more. Fact is, the energy that is necessary for me to eat a mango could never be generated by my own body. And it has a cost.
Why am I telling you this?
There are lots of very interesting things to know about energy and many facts and comparisons that we rarely ever think about. It’s fascinating to understand and think about the energy we use and I believe that none of us want to waste energy unnecessarily. All of this information is out there, but not many of us have time to do the research.
I’ll be spending the next couple of months exploring ways to spread knowledge about energy generation and energy use more widely. I want to explain the underlying dynamics of energy markets, post the questions I’ve started asking myself, and also point out facts that I simply find really interesting.
We all waste a lot of energy by choosing options that don’t give us any benefits and that we only choose because we didn’t think about it. There is huge savings potential here.
Join me as I work to understand how energy impacts our lives and how we can make the best, most thoughtful use of it.
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