Energy Economics Behind Food Digestion

Since digestion takes energy, it is helpful to think about the "cost to revenue ratio" (fuel efficiency) of foods that we eat


We all realize on some level that food is very similar to a drug. When hunger sets in, withdrawal symptoms become apparent. Confusion, decreased mental functioning, weakness, nausea, unpleasant moods, negative perception of the world/humanity, etc. When we finally get a chance to eat again, what we all want is for the molecular building blocks within food to reach and become part of our key bodily systems as quickly and efficiently as possible. There are simple mathematics behind digesting fuel that should be kept in mind.

Digestion takes caloric energy. Eating food drains us to a degree that is dependent on the resistance of the food to intestinal acids. If the food is more difficult to digest it'll take more bodily energy to break it into molecular building blocks for the body. This in turn will result in one's body not operating at peak levels. Here's 2 examples to illustrate (the numbers are randomly selected for clear cut demonstration):

A) A deep fried blob of meat is stuffed with 1000 units of energy and it takes the body 500 units of energy to break it down over a period of 5 hours. This produces an average of 100 units of energy per hour for the body over 5 hours (1000-500)/5. The average ratio of energy cost to revenue is 1 to 2. If this food is dumped into a ravenous energy deprived body, then energy will be pulled from other areas of the body to begin the digestion. This will be manifest with muscle tiredness, coldness (energy diverted from heating systems to the stomach), and even lack of tangible cognitive improvement within first hour after eating. Thus the initial ratio of energy cost to revenue can even cancel each other out. Not the drug "fix" one is looking for. We want to squeeze more out of our business.

B) A bowl of cold quinoa salad with various nuts and berries is only stuffed with 500 units of energy. It takes 100 units of energy to digest it over 1 hour. Body gets 400 units of energy in this time. Ratio of energy cost to revenue here is 1 to 5. Since the powerful acids in the stomach can immediately rip apart the cold salad into building blocks, this means a rapid huge boost of energy from acceleration of cognitive and physical functioning. Molecular building blocks are quickly transported via blood stream to reinforce every key system in the body. The negatives of such a quick and efficient fix is that the energy high wears off after an hour leading to rather rapid onset of hunger and noticeable physiological slowdown. The business is very profitable but has to be fed at a breakneck rate that is not always sustainable.

Proper utilization of energy economics in food can allow an individual to achieve the equivalent of a coffee boost (from nutritious food that has weak cell lining allowing the body to make short work of it). Our bodies are the most complex wonderful machines we have access to. Do we put nasty poorly treated gasoline into a high end sports car? No, since we understand that it requires immediate high performance. An advanced jet airplane requires specialized jet fuel for maximum ratio of energy cost to revenue.

So why do many people treat their bodies worse than they treat their cars? Besides the socioeconomic factors behind it, there are also practical considerations. Food that is less efficient to digest has a release of energy that can be described as "extended release" in pharmacological terminology. A slice of pepperoni pizza will provide hours of inefficiently acquired energy. Of course if one has a powerful metabolism, one can pump lots of high energy inefficient food into the system and even get a caloric rush after some digestion has already occurred. Combined with the fact that such foods are often solid liquor buffers, it becomes a no brainer. Fuel like quinoa will not only be a poor buffer but its effects will constantly and annoyingly run out. Nobody wants to carry a grain basket with them. Of course in the long term, the heavy fuel will corrode/clog up the system and become increasingly counterproductive as the human machine is now expanding energy units to support heavier weight with all the health ailments associated with it.

However when it comes to day to day life and wanting to be at peak cognitive and emotional levels, digestive efficiency has to be kept in mind. Proper combination of the two types of fuel can result in relatively quick onset of good cheer and solid functioning (energy release from say, quinoa being immediately rerouted to help neutralize weakening from digestion of heavy fuel) without a crash or desire for an afternoon siesta.

Energy Independence: How Much Nuclear Power Do We Need?

Fission and fusion power is the green cake of the future. Solar and geothermal is the icing. Lets make more cake.

The urgency and opportunity has never been greater for the world to engage in a large scale effort to mass produce third and fourth generation nuclear power plants. Only fission and then fusion projects can provide the concentration of energy (bang for your resource buck) needed to effectively power 21st century infrastructure like MagLev trains, desalination plants, and terraforming projects to turn deserts into farmland.

First, the recent nuclear disarmament treaty between Washington and Moscow provides substantial amounts of ready to use highly enriched uranium. Currently, 45% of nuclear power and 10% of total power in United States is already provided by dismantled Soviet warheads. The supply from new and future arsenal cuts (US has recently revealed it has 5,113 warheads overall) will push back peak uranium worries and create a situation where there is a lot more nuclear fuel than power plants to utilize it. Thousands of ready made warhead fuel cores are waiting to be used as we speak.

Second, there are signs that increasing numbers of America's oligarchy are concerned about being humiliated by the Chinese and Russian elites when it comes to making money off nuclear reactors internationally and acquiring corresponding prestige. This is significant in that the luddite rich kid baby boomers, former ivy league hippies, and gravediggers of FDR's infrastructure policies are coming around to the idea of reawakening the nuclear engine of growth in the 50s and 60s. This was noted in Obama's semi acceptance of McCain's nuclear energy proposal during the state of the union speech. The number of new reactors pushed by the administration is inexcusably low now but they can be a political foot in the door towards future construction. Additionally, a key player in the military establishment (General Electric) has used its propaganda arm (NBC) to start a national nuclear energy discussion with the documentary The Nuclear Option right around the time when GE was swinging financial and propaganda support towards Obama's election. National discussion of any serious issue with potential for massive societal uplift and transformation is very rare these days so the mere existence of a widely broadcast pro-nuclear energy documentary is significant (imagine if there were documentaries on NBC that slam federal reserve, military industrial complex, and insufficient taxation of the rich).

Third, the historic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has the potential to be "oil's Chernobyl". That is, to psychologically imprint on the youtube generation's mind that pushing Hubbert's peak through shale and offshore is very costly and deadly compared to fission. Nuclear energy serves as an important point of political contact and agreement between young (educated) environmentalists and young conservative nationalists. De Gaulle's nationalistic model of energy independence for France through safe clean mass nuclear power serves as a continuing example to emulate and rally behind. Since Russia recently spurned French nuclear industry (through an alliance with Germany to mass construct nuclear reactors for sale abroad), US has a chance at genuinely constructive and mutually beneficial outreach to Paris.


So how much nuclear energy do we need?

As much as can be made at any given time. The need resembles bullet making in wartime. What people need to remember is that nuclear science does not stand as relatively still as coal/oil burning science. Third and fourth generation reactors stand to be exponentially more powerful (think Richter scale) than their first and second generation cousins. Fission technology is evolving and will continue to produce more and more energy per pound of uranium until new sources of high intensity energy are ready for application (fusion). US would have been energy independent long time ago if construction of newer and newer reactors continued at same pace as in the 50s and 60s.

As of 2006, world's energy production rose to 472 quadrillion Btu from 283 quadrillion Btu in 1980 (66% increase). World's population in same period has grown from 4.5 billion to 6.5 billion (44% increase).

That is pathetic and criminal if one looks at it from perspective of enforcing the UN charter of human rights.

In more than 25 years since third generation nuclear reactor technology became a reality, there has been just 18% growth in how much average energy is available to a human on this planet (73 million Btu per person versus 62 million in 1980). This would obviously be horrifying even without the fact of exponentially disproportionate use of energy by some homo sapien over others. The amount of available energy per person should always be exponentially increasing if humanity is to survive and prosper through terraforming, high tech agricultural/water projects, and space exploration.

Western technological luddites and fear mongers always explain how each person on the planet cannot have the same "way of life" as a middle class Westerner (living in poorly designed suburban sprawl) . The current planetary energy policy (or lack of it) makes that statement not only true but hints at the genocidal implications if it is continued. The problem boils down to:

a) Necessity of people in the southern hemisphere to skip the inefficient suburban residential infrastructure lifestyle step (lifestyle that young westerners are moving away from through migration to urban centers) and go straight into high tech urban living (the way some rural areas of India went from no telephone straight to wireless broadband)
b) Insufficient energy available to world's poorer people to power machines that extract/refine commodities, power machines in utilization of these commodities for construction, power the new construction in order to even have the inefficient suburban infrastructure that they need to skip

Solution to this two part problem lays in mass production of new reactors that are spread over the planet in a way so there is roughly same amount of energy available per human. This average energy amount would be growing annually. Such kind of energy egalitarianism would bring enormous environmental benefits as 2 billion poorest people leapfrog over (instead of repeating) the 20th century residential construction process in the West. Of course, this new energy could be used for suburban construction but if average income Westerners and Asians acquire ability and will to build and maintain high density futuristic cities (that make Portland seem inefficient and provincial), then that becomes the role model lifestyle instead of American style urban sprawl.

The growth in total energy available to humanity should always be accelerating and not be pegged to population growth (such as energy growth 3-4 times the world population's and no more). This would prevent global violence and struggle over commodities by allowing advanced nations to build mass infrastructure for themselves as well as for southern hemisphere simultaneously. Most importantly, with sufficient growth in amount of reactors, oil and coal fueled suburban lifestyle will actually be more expensive in comparison to planned nuclear urbanization. Same way as suburbia powered by burning wood would be ridiculous in comparison to an oil powered city. In the process of moving straight from subsistence living to a concentrated density nuclear city, a lot of environment and human dignity is saved. As of today, urbanization is still happening around the world but only in the horrid slum expansion variety. Poorer countries have plenty of resources to barter in exchange for reactors. There are even small floating reactors being developed now that can be towed to client's ports.

Imagine the possibilities and what people would have done if 1000 modern coal power plants appeared in 1880s America. Similar societal gain is possible with international UN/G20 backed fission/fusion campaign. The entire world would become equally developing since the concept of Western suburban house and an electric car near it would seem ridiculously archaic and inefficient goal to strive towards. With sufficient power, completely reimagined and modular cities of the future are possible that are linked by MagLev trains spanning entire continents. With enough power you can have enclosed organic farms in the most inhospitable of areas. With enough power you can utilize larger and more advanced mechanized forces do extract more resources out of the ground cleanly and better reuse materials harvested from older cities/buildings. Most importantly, more energy production allows power to be basically free for individuals and small light industry businesses.

Fission power today is only 15% of world's energy production but can be rapidly expanded to over 50% with sufficient international cooperation. BRIC countries are already engaged in slowly revving up potential for mass production of third generation reactors. The trick towards entering the 21st century rests on tapping the economies of scale for large capital intensive projects. Each additional reactor will be cheaper than the last as well as the retooling machinery upgrades. The process needs to be international in scope and streamlined the way some weapons manufacturing is during wartime.

Hopefully USA's oligarchy will finally accept reality and necessity of collaborative nuclear power plant construction sooner than expected (as much as they'd hate the side effects of empowerment, improved quality of life, and better infrastructure for the peasants that it'll bring). Geothermal and solar do have their complimentary roles to fission and fusion but as an icing on the cake of macro technological progress.

Real Economy is Physical

Economics is an engineering challenge. In its current form, economics can't be salvaged from its total failure and pseudo-science status and should be replaced by engineering to prevent near future starvation for large swaths of humanity. Also a 5 point plan to save the planet ;)


The Wall Street vs Main Street dichotomy has been so overused in the news that it is sickening. It is time to replace this loaded married couple terminology with another. The first reason for this is that WS vs MS split has now become a political slogan and a heuristic and thus does not promote thoughtfulness. The second more important reason is that it obscures the reality of what the real economy is.

"Wall Street" has come to symbolize just meaningless paper shuffling gambling that is the financial sector. "Main Street" apparently includes everything else such as telemarketing, McDonalds service, prostitution, web design, and of course industrial production. Politicians tend to lump service industry like catering (and other demeaning unpleasant tasks that poor people are forced into to not die of starvation or exposure) and actual industry like engine part manufacture together. Since financial sector is a service sector (smart people overworking in mind numbing meaningless tasks to make the rich richer) we see how WS vs MS is not a real dichotomy at all due to the enormous overlap in classification.


Will the real economy please stand up?

I have written how the field of economics the way we know it today is so wasteful and separated from real empirical investigation as to require the term stupid. Any Western Economics 101 course will still dutifully inform that it is a study on how to deal with allocation of finite resources. In that, economists not only failed but have made the global situation much worse. Western economists are not only as ideological as Soviet economists were but have now devolved to the level of historians who study past moves made by powerful/wealthy people. When they are not busy defending themselves as real scientists through utilization of advanced statistics (to study decisions made by oligarchs as if they were orbits of planets) they are cheerleaders and cautious financial planners for rich people who don't like to think. An analogy can be made with French generals confident that the Maginot line will hold against the tried and true offensive methods. It is no surprise that in the latest crisis of capitalism, most people regardless of their class have lost money. Economics today is not only failing the poor but a large portion of the very rich as well (who then find themselves one day with only the grand stories of their parents).

The term economics has been tainted to such a degree that it may be too late to reclaim it. Lets look at the definition of another word and see if it has any application to dealing in a world of finite material and human resources.

"Engineering - The creative application of scientific principles to design or develop structures, machines, apparatus, or manufacturing processes, or works utilizing them singly or in combination; or to construct or operate the same with full cognizance of their design; or to forecast their behavior under specific operating conditions; all as respects an intended function, economics of operation and safety to life and property."

Now we're getting somewhere. It appears that economists have wanted to be engineers all along but at some point wandered off into the land of the stupid in an effort to create some ideological justification for the Cold War (follow the money trail of rich people or their puppet government organs funding the research of these brave "scientists"). Of course after a couple of generations (of economics being a creative attempt to demonstrate to the world why Western oligarchy should continue) this mutated pseudo-science has become entrenched. Youngsters on the scene either would not be hired to teach if they disagreed with the pseudo-science faculty or wanted to demonstrate how much of the nonsense they understand and thus left their brain at the door to please the older generations of these so called academics.

Most people assume that the point of economic advice would be to make everybody better off materially in the end. This means make everybody in either one nation, region, or the whole world have more access and control over resources which in turn would make the average human being on the planet healthier, more educated, happier, and better able to make use of his or her physiological talents for self-actualization or profit.

Only engineering can do that. Humanity's only way of dealing with finite resources is to better utilize these resources. This requires ever rising level of energy available to humanity to operate machines. The process is very simple:

1) Always develop new ways to make construction of power plants faster and cheaper. One assumes mass scale production of parts to make power plants. The goal is to pop them out like one does a supercomputer with periodic retooling as better machines to make parts are invented (Japanese lead the way currently in replacing even the cheapest of human assembly line workers so factories can run almost full time).

2) Keep increasing production of ever more efficient and powerful power plants.

3) Utilize ever rising levels of energy to extract, refine/recycle, and put into use ever rising quantity of natural resources for mass construction of high tech farms throughout the world. With enough energy and materials enclosed farming with artificial sunshine/weather control is more than possible from the Sahara desert to the frozen tundras. Keep increasing numbers and quality of these farms until vast majority of people spend almost no caloric energy and productive time working to feed themselves. Keep in mind that organic chemical free food in these farms is only a question of cheap energy and materials. There is absolutely no need to send food thousands of miles across the planet and stuff it full of preservatives so this mummified food survives the journey.

4) Utilize same rising level of energy and labor freed from farming to build ever rising number of high tech places of learning throughout the world. Keep improving the efficiency of these places of learning as one does the farms. One assumes a type of modular construction so parts of the places of learning and the high tech farms can be recycled every few years and replaced with newer systems.

5) Utilize the mind power of billions of newly educated people to build better systems of power plant part production to keep churning out more energy generating sources and to reorganize socioeconomics to that end.

Rinse repeat. Rinse repeat. Rinse repeat. Rinse repeat. Rinse repeat until the solar system is colonized and humanity is in a post-scarcity transhuman world. Keep constructing better energy sources beyond this point as well naturally.

All human politics should be directed towards power generation. This means more engineers and scientists in government instead of lawyer playboys. Chinese leadership is full of engineers and this is reflected in China's growth rate. Current batch of economists should be driven out of government policy decision making as one would drive out the clergy giving advise to the government. Every government should have an engineering ministry and we should hear of "president's engineering advisers" instead of economic advisers. This is the only way to prevent large scale starvation for a large part of humanity in the relatively near future (not even mentioning maintaining living standards).

The side effects of such energy driven policy would of course be the possibility of other engineering marvels in the aid of construction of the power plants and places of learning. Some examples are frictionless magnetic levitation transport methods. Even today, high speed trains are already cutting into airline profits as seen by 80% drop in airfares in parts of China. To make full circle, the goal of economics should always have been to allow humans to spend next to zero caloric energy on travel, food, education, safe/pleasant shelter, etc. Instead humanity saw a worsening of their situation where even people in the Western oligarchies spend a lot of their caloric energy to get paper to exchange for traveling from point A to point B. If this continues only the rich will be able to have relatively pleasant transcontinental travel (with the poor being crammed into large slow moving ships like in the 19th century if they scrape enough for a ticket).

The goal of all governments historically is to constantly raise the minimum level of material comfort for their citizenry. This means an energy driven policy. Governments that fail in this goal are always replaced sooner or later. The transition period from today to tomorrow will require all efforts towards nuclear power. Even the American oligarchs understand the precariousness of their position as shown by president Obama's adoption of McCain's nuclear energy policy in his state of the union speech. Yes, solar has to be pursued but only as a bell and whistle to the nuclear power plant production. If one looks at how much land area is needed for wind/solar (and power needed to extract resources to then make parts for the wind/solar machines) to make as much energy one modern power plant, there is no contest. Green tech today is but another bubble for Wall Street and is a dead end economically and environmentally (solar for instance requires enormous amount of water that could be used to produce nutrient rich food).

Nuclear energy power plants provide the most energy bang for the energy buck. Building them is better/cleaner for the planet and the only chance humanity has to live until fusion reactors and space based power supplies are constructed and are operational. It is no wonder that British oligarchy are completely against them as they want to promote "conservation" rather than expansion and thus preservation of the current nasty neo-feudal world order. Americans in the 1950s understood the possibilities of nuclear power and that is why they thought we'd be in a drastically different place today as a species. If we stop listening to economists and expose them as the charlatans that they are, it is still possible. The only main street is material industrial production with energy generation as primary focus.