Comment Re:Efficiency (Score 1) 181
This seems to be how the human brain works, and it runs on less than 100 watts (100 watts corresponds to 2000 Calories per day).
A whole woman consumes 100 watts. Of that brain is about 20 watts. Also, watt represents momentary consumption and calories are a fixed mass of energy, so you can't directly compare them.
You can do so reasonably well for sedentary (that is, most) people. There is a basal metabolic rate that consumes most calories for most people and only throttles down 10% at night. Even if an average person were to run a mile every day, they would only be burning an extra 120 Kcal, 6% more than their baseline 2000 Kcal, during that ~10 minute energy burst. This regimen matches the CDC recommendations for exercise (75 minutes of intense activity a week), but 80% of Americans don't even make it to this level.
So quoting an average energy consumption rate for the body is a reasonable approximation of the situation.