Who is the worse gas guzzler? You or your car?
Posted September 9th, 2007 at 11:00 AM by Jimson Lee
Section: Nutrition, Healthy Eating, Health & Fitness, Weight Loss
I’ve often wondered, who is the worse gas guzzler, you or your car?
My dependable 1999 Saturn SL-1 according to the Marketplace Fuel Survey Data (read the full story here), gets about 52 miles per gallon highway, and about 32 miles per gallon city driving with air conditioning and traffic.
Let’s take the human body for example.
Recently, I had no choice but to eat at McDonalds during a business trip. I had 2 Egg-Sausage-Cheese-McGriddle sandwiches for breakfast and a meduim orange juice. That’s about 1270 food Calories (or kCal) and it cost me $7.28. Here is the breakdown:
- each Egg-Sausage-Cheese-McGriddle sandwich: 530 Calories, 44g Carbs (47%), 20g Protein (21%), 29g fat (31%)
- Medium Orange Juice: 210 Calories, 17g Carbs, 0g Protein, 0g fat
If you add the 3 items above, that’s 55% Carbs, 18% Protein, and 26% Fat! No wonder North America has an obesity problem!
Since an average human body burns about 100 kCal per mile, whether you walk or run, that’s 1300 kCal for 13 miles.
At today’s gas prices, about $3.00 per gallon (or $1.10 per litre) for regular unleaded, that’s about $1.22 for 13 city miles.
So, it cost me $7.28 to travel 13 miles instead of my car at $1.22.
Interesting food for thought… no pun intended!
***Note: We encourage EVERYONE to see a doctor before altering their diet, taking a supplement and/or performing athletic, fitness or other strenuous physical activity. It is your responsibility to evaluate the accuracy, completeness and usefulness of any information, instruction, opinion or advice contained in the content. Please also see our complete disclaimer.***
Tags: calories, calories burned, car, carbs, fat, food, obesity, protein
Like what you see? Subscribe to our feed!
The Final Sprint
Love the analogy! I think you’ve hit a very solid point here, we do sometimes run a very “fuel inefficient” vehicle when we eat junk like that.
September 10th, 2007 at 10:54 amThe human body is efficient in some respects and not in others. The use of Ethanol made from corn would be an interesting case.
Ultimately the car should be more efficient as it has wheels but cars don’t have emergency fuel reserves (fat) or the same off road ability (climbing, hiking).
You could have put racing fuel in the car for 10 times as much or just bought a kilo of sugar (4000 calories) for less than a $1. Interesting debate though.
October 10th, 2007 at 2:00 pm[…] I recently wrote an article on The Final Sprint and discussed the how inefficient junk food and fast food are to the working human body. The findings are surprising but not shocking. This year I have the great pleasure of teaching at San Jose State University. I am currently teachng 2 beginning weight training courses and I have a fairly wide range of things I can teach. The main part of the course is the workout which comprises approximately 40 of the 50 minutes of the class. […]
October 24th, 2007 at 4:57 am