Mirage_GSM wrote:Walrusfella wrote:Upon thinking about it some more, I realised that her advantage, fitness, might actually be a liability in an isolated survival situation. Since her body's a highly efficient machine she'd need a lot of calories per day just to stay alive.
Citation needed.
Um, okay. Here goes.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates a person's minimum daily energy requirements by finding the Basal Metabolic Rate or
BMR. Their preferred method is the
Schofield equation. The reference for that can be found in
this report (pdf) under section 3.2.3. Some institutions have switched use the newer Institute of Medicine equation but screw that one, it's way harder and measures and entirely different thing.
Emi is a
19 year old female so her equation would look like this: BMR = 14.8 x W + 487. So 14.8 x 41 kg + 487 = 1093. Then the number is adjusted upward or downward within the limit of the standard error of estimation, which in this case would be 120. I'm not even remotely qualified to apply that, so I'll leave it as is. Emi's would probably go up within that limit, however. Come to think of it, I'm not remotely qualified to do any of this. Moving on.
Hanako is 18, so she would use the same equation. 14.8 x 52kg + 487 = 1256. With the SEE applied it would probably go down, but again I'll leave it as is.
The key thing here is that under the Schofield equation, the last thing you do is multiply the raw number by a Physical Activity Factor.
I think we can agree that Emi falls under the "very active" catagory, which for women would have a factor of 1.9. So 1093 x 1.9 = 2076 calories minimum per day, assuming she rests and doesn't do anything at all.
Hanako would fall under "sedentary", which would give her a factor of 1.3. So 1256 x 1.3 = 1632 calories minimum per day, substantially less.
Anyway, all this bafflegab flies straight out the window, because upon closer inspection of the original post there is adequate food available, making my scenario way less grim.