Explain the statement "the lower down in the food chain we eat, the greater percentage of solar energy we put to use, and the more people Earth can support" in terms of trophic levels and pyramids of energy
What will be an ideal response?
Meat is farther from the sun in the food chain than plant material. Consuming meat decreases the amount of usable energy that is obtained directly from the sun because animals must first consume plants before they are eaten by humans. Every time energy moves from one trophic level to the next, as much as 90% of the useful energy present in the lower trophic level is lost. This is because the second law of energy states that entropy increases as one goes from one level to the next and energy is lost as heat or light at each transfer. For this reason, people who rely heavily on meat as a source of food energy are less energy efficient than ones that rely on fewer animal products or a vegetarian diet. The biomass pyramid echoes this, as each trophic level contains less biomass (energy) than the lower level.
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