US 2005 mean animal-based food energy production

Value 4400 kJ/person/day
Organism Human Homo sapiens
Reference Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin, Diet, Energy and Global Warming, Earth Interactions, Vol. 10, pp. 1-17, March 2006 link p.5 top paragraph
Primary Source FAOSTAT, 2005: Statistical Database of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, available from link
Method P.4 bottom paragraph: "To address the variability in energy consumption and GHG [green house gas] emissions for food, [investigators] focus on a principal source of such variability, plant- versus animal-based diets. To facilitate a quantitative analysis, [they] define and consider several semirealistic mixed diets: mean American, red meat, fish, poultry, and lacto-ovo vegetarian. These diets are shown schematically in Figure 1. To obtain the mean American diet, researchers use actual per capita food supply data summarized in the Food Balance Sheets for 2002 (primary source)."
Comments P.5 top paragraph: "Those Balance Sheets report a total gross caloric consumption of 3774 Kcal/person/day (BNID 104634), of which 1047 Kcal, or 27.7%, are animal-based. Of those 1047 Kcal/day, 41% are derived from dairy products, 5% from eggs, and the remaining 54% from various meats. For comparison, [investigators] let all diets, including the exclusively plant-based one (“vegan”), comprise the same total number of gross calories, 3774 kcal/day." Value derived using 1047kcal in the equation 1 Calorie=~4.2 Joule. In 2002 in the US
Entered by Uri M
ID 104636