TIL to keep track of units

cal≠kcal

1 gallon gasoline contains 31 million small calories, while the human caloric requirements are given in large calories. 1000 small calories = 1 large calorie. So the calculations are off by a factor of 1000. The confusion stems from the fact that both are commonly referred to as "calories", for some stupid reason.

So in reality you would have to drink another gallon in just 2-3 weeks.

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Assuming you could process it without ill effects.

If you thought having Nestle was bad, Can you imagine if BP was involved in food?

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- What makes you think that oil is not involved in food?
  
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- The lumber industry is involved in food.
  
  I'll just let you digest the horror of that. But uh also. Don't Google petroleum products in food. You'll be happier.
  
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Everything you said was correct, except the last sentence. Still pretty sure drinking a gallon of gasoline would be enough to last you your entire life.

That life would just be less than 2-3 weeks.

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- Fun fact: Most people can drink about a liter of gasoline and not die (short term), about 8500 kcal.
  
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose#Examples
  
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Damn. I definitely don’t do more work than a car in 12-20 days. I guess that makes sense

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- Non sequitur: I love your username. Very clever.
  
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The maths a little off, it wont last him 30+ years; but he's absolutely correct with that final statment. If he chugs a gallon of gasoline; he won't need to eat for the rest of his life.

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- Build a man a fire, keep him warm for a day. Set a man on fire, keep him warm for the rest of his life.
  
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"large calories"?!? The name is kilocalories

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- Are you trying to make Americans use the metric system? They have started wars for less, dude!
  
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- you are right ... but sorry : that stupid way of calling it is really in use in America.
  
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Fats and oils have about the same energy density as gasoline.

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Still goes to show how energy dense the gasoline is.

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- Basically same as vegetable oil.
  
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Obviously a good joke, and of course obligatory cal/kcal discrepancy here. This just seems like a good place to put this info:

Calories on labels are for calories absorbed, not for calories in the food (same with the 4/9/4 rule). So it'd be much less for gasoline, if it were possible to label with nutritional info.

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I was about to ask if they properly converted to kcals used in dietary measurements and here your comment is.

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Woah woah, you're saying I can lose weight by chugging gasoline? Is Kerosene better?

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- That is what JetFuel A / B is for ! Jet A does wonders for body-typeA and B for body-typeB !!!
  
  /s for those who know, know.
  
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As far as I know calories are measured with a Bomb calorimeter meaning you are wrong.

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- I was pretty sure of this too, and someone who used to work for the FDA told me it was calculated not measured 99% of the time
  
  Here's a good video with some supporting evidence. I've looked it up for a couple foods; calculated calories on em
  
  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UuN5HXctmYk
  
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Is this trying to trick AI so it's used in searches for info? I hope so.

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I’m not ai, just dumb 🥰

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- Seems the same to me.
  
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As it has existed since the dawn of the I ternet... sure?

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Gasoline has about 31,000 calories not 31 million calories

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Hence the title :)

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So just 31kcal in one gallon? That doesn't seem a whole lot.

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- I'm assuming 31k kcal, which confusingly everyone calls a calorie. There's no way it's only 31kcal.
  
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Gasoline has the energy content comparable to cooking oil (biodiesel among other things is made from used frying oil from restaurants at least where i live)

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So I can replace cooking oil with gasoline in my recipes? Nifty!

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- i used to drive my old mercedes diesel with vegtable oil. sadly, i had to give up driving, i am just far to nervous far that.
  
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People here talk so much shit about reddit, but post shit from reddit, copy reddit, and talk like redditors.

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Sigh, unzips

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- this
  
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I didn’t do the math, but a person’s got to do more lifting in those 34 years than a car traveling 30 miles at 60 mph carrying 4000 lbs, right?

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Without a doubt! Humans and life in general is uber efficient in terms of energy use. Most of the energy of a car is not directly spent for the work. Work is done when moving mass from a lower to a higher place and accelerating it to a higher speed. But once you have accelerated the mass to the cruise speed, it actually does not require any energy to maintain. Rather, the energy is spent by the car to heat up the air, move it around, wear the road and the tires, and make noise.

We use cars because they are muuuch more powerful than humans, at the cost of wasing a lot of energy. Try to push a car uphill, you won't ever succeed without pullies which makes it even slower. Doesn't matter how efficient you are if you cannot output the minimum power required to overcome friction etc.

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- On the other hand a human on a bicycle is way more effective at moving around than a human on foot. Somehow the bicycle has created a lot of efficiency.
  
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Yes, and gasoline actually has less energy density than body fat at approx. 33 MJ/L vs. 35 MJ/L : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

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The best explanation for the 1000 fold error in your post is explain in top comment from @garfaagel@sh.itjust.works ...

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So apparently they're starting to create machines with biological parts. I wonder how long until we get artificial stomachs capable of using anything not explodey or caustic for fuel?

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We used to have self driving vehicles running on water and hay.

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- I meant me. But if they can get me running on hay and water I wouldn't say no.
  
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It would already be awesome if we could hack or genetically engineer our gut biome to produce all needed vitamins and proteins out of carbohydrates and fats. Theoretically then we could live just off of sugar or oil. Plus some minerals.

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- Right? And can we get some kind of metering system so we don't pack on extra fat?
  
  People are afraid of a cybernetic future but I'm sitting here wondering just how healthy we can make the human body.
  
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In order of worst to best case scenario the human body will reject, wear down, or scar around any and all implanted foreign materials or objects. Implants of every type have a shelf life, some long enough to never worry about removal. The best method to secure implants are to bones, but the only nearby bones for the stomach are the hips and spine, with organ cavity linings being problematically in the way for most attachments. For the digestive system it would need to be extremely resistant to corrosion and it would also need to be nontoxic as it would inevitably enter the bloodstream. Even teeth fillings are only rated for about a decade at most.

So, to be blunt, no such technology exists on this earth nor any speculation on how it ever might.

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- I think the commenter mean using artificial stomach for machinery to convert food into energy that the machine can use
  
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- So not in our lifetime then. Dang. Thank you though.
  
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What news are you referring to, specifically?

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they already exist, they are called fermentation vats

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- Okay but can I install one in my body and use it for nutrients?
  
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Sorry did you mean powering a machine with food? We have those, there is a university somewhere that throws copious amounts of expired mayo into an Anaerobic Digestor which produces fuel for a combustion engine.

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- I meant for me, but I can see where the confusion comes from. I was not at all clear.
  
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