Why can people last longer without food than they can without water? Food has water in it. Does this not factor in to survival?
In: Biology
It does – for example, you’d last longer eating a bunch of grapes than you would stale bread.
If you were entirely sedentary and a 154lb man, you’d need to intake at a bare minimum 32 ounces of water per day to survive. Note that this is far beneath anything resembling a healthy level and you’d likely have major health complications, and die if you actually did much of anything.
Getting a quarter gallon worth of water from food in a day is a tall order, and typically if you’re in a situation where you have absolutely no water, you’re not going to have the benefit of a surplus of food or to just lounge around in a comfortable environment.
Meanwhile, the body has much more reliable methods for storing large amounts of energy in the form of fat. And if that fails, the body can cannibalize muscle.
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