In school I was taught that you when you eat something on you only get 10% of the energy because 90% percent is used, looking for the food or other things. If this is wrong an explanation would be awesome.
In: Biology
I put it in a reply elsewhere, but just for people to see, what everyone is referring to is related to [trophic levels](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level), which is more or less the tier of things in the food web.
A primary producer/level 1 is plants. Herbivores are level 2/secondary, carnivores level 3/tertiary and so on.
Each jump up a level will see a large decrease in the amount of calories gained relative to what went into the entire line. That’s what everyone is talking about. Herbivores need to eat a lot of plants to get their energy. Carnivores that eat them miss a LOT of what energy went into that herbivore when they eat them. Carnivores that eat other carnivores, like humans, lose even more. We get a really small amount of the total energy that went to bring us our food.
The main advantage is that meat and stuff is really calorie dense. So even though we missed a huge chunk in the process, overall, we need to eat a lot less.
Lettuce is a good example. You need to eat a literal truck load to get any real nutritional value or calorie quantity, but a steak has like, 200 calories.
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