I've been taking the bus to work, and if I haven't charged my PowerBook or am forced to stand, this gives me time to ponder imponderables, like how much does Superman eat?
If the comics are to be taken at face value, Superman can do things like lift buses over his head and fly at great rates of speed. Buses are heavy, so lifting one would take a lot of energy. A calorie consumption benchmark says that 10 minutes of "vigorous" weightlifting burns around 120 calories for a 250 pound human. Just for the sake of argument, let's say that 10 minutes means five sets of 10 repetitions of clean-and-jerk at 180 pounds, so that's about 9,000 cleaned-and-jerked pounds per 120 calories or 75 cleaned-and-jerked pounds per calorie. Lifting a (40-foot, diesel, unoccupied) 40,000 pound bus burns around 533 calories or just about exactly one Big Mac.
So, my unscientific answer would be that Superman eats... a lot.
Comment from Bob Lee @ 2005-12-17T17:14:35Z # permalink