How much will you eat in a lifetime?
Multiply a normal day by 27 000 and the totals become strange: about 30 tonnes of food across a life.
94% of a lifetime of food
30,000 kg is more than 5 of the 7 references on this page.
Reference figures are measurements and are rounded; the unit conversion behind them is exact.
| Reference | Size | Yours ÷ theirs | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| a day of food | 1.2 kg | 25,000× | |
| a year of food | 440 kg | 68.2× | |
| a small car | 1,200 kg | 25× | |
| a lifetime of coffee | 1,900 kg | 15.8× | Two cups a day |
| an African elephant | 6,000 kg | 5× | For comparison |
| a lifetime of food | 32,000 kg | 0.938× | About 73 years |
| a lifetime of water | 55,000 kg | 0.545× |
Worth knowing
- An average person eats about 32 tonnes of food in a lifetime — five African elephants.
- They also drink around 55 000 litres of water, which is 22 Olympic-pool lane volumes or one very large tanker truck.
Frequently asked
How much food does a person eat in a year?
Around 440 kg of food and 800 litres of drink, though the mass varies enormously with diet — a plant-heavy diet weighs considerably more for the same calories.
How much water should you drink?
About 2 to 2.5 litres a day of total fluid for an adult, of which roughly a fifth comes from food. The "eight glasses" rule has no clear origin in evidence.