If I was shrunk down to an inch or less tall, how would that effect food/my metabolism?

[Milwaukee Macho Man]

Say that I got hit with the shrink ray from Honey I Shrunk the Kids and I was only like a centimeter or an inch tall or whatever.

Would my metabolism reflect this? Or would food reflect this?

Like say I came across a single kernel of corn. Would that kernel of corn only be like less than a calorie to tiny me even if it filled my stomach up?

 

[Syntaxion]

Calories stay calories, it's measurement. It's the energy required to increase 1 gram of water by 1 degree celsius at normal atmosphere. A kernel of corn has 0.2 calories, for everyone, no matter their size.

Your caloric needs would go down though. Either your cells shrink with you, or you simply have less cells but either way, you'll need less calories per day

A kernel of corn is 0,25 to 0,30 gram

Apparantly the height is max 2.5cm

No online calculator allows these low numbers so we have to use the full equation to calculate how many calories you'd need per day

Let's use the revised Harris Benedict formula:

Harris–Benedict equation - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It's kind of fucked, because the equation doesn't work for that size, but whatever

Anyway,

td;dr

If you were shrunk to that size, your caloric daily need would be

20 calories per day at age 0

15 calories per day at age 1

10 calories per day at age 2

5 calories per day at age 3

Your metabolism would reflect this, food has the same amount of calories for everyone. You'd just need far less calories.

 

[Idiotron]

If we're going down that path, how are you breathing?
The particles in the air are now a lot bigger than what you're used to.
Can your body handle that?
In Star Trek, they had to have shrunken air to be able to breathe.

 

[Dammit Mandrake!]

@Syntaxion12 You gave a great answer backed by research and math.

Such a shame that a meme answer is going to beat you out as the correct answer.

 

[Milwaukee Macho Man]

If we're going down that path, how are you breathing?
The particles in the air are now a lot bigger than what you're used to.
Can your body handle that?
In Star Trek, they had to have shrunken air to be able to breathe.

I thought this was only a thing on the microscopic level.

 

[libRT]

Metabolism is the least of your worries, how can you shrink your brain to like 1/100th of a size but still be as smart? Will all of the more intricate systems scale down properly? I.e will lungs still work and the air sacs not get smushed by normal pressure because all the walls are much thinner

 

[Shig O'nella]

There are mammals that are that small - they also have heartrates in the 150 - 200 bpm range, and a digestive system than can efficiently process two or three times their body weight in food every day.

None of which you have, nor are you going to magically learn how to do it in the hour or so you'd have before your heart explodes or your brain fries from the attempt at keeping yourself at 37C.

Square/cube law for heat dissipation is an unforgiving bitch.

 

[Solid Snek]

There are mammals that are that small - they also have heartrates in the 150 - 200 bpm range, and a digestive system than can efficiently process two or three times their body weight in food every day.

None of which you have, nor are you going to magically learn how to do it in the hour or so you'd have before your heart explodes or your brain fries from the attempt at keeping yourself at 37C.

Square/cube law for heat dissipation is an unforgiving bitch.

That's not the question. The question isn't "would OP survive being shrink-rayed?" (he would; Rick Moranis says your square/cube law can suck a dick), the question is "would OP still need/get the same amount of calories from food if he was shrink-rayed?"

 

[Mr. Bung]

There are mammals that are that small - they also have heartrates in the 150 - 200 bpm range, and a digestive system than can efficiently process two or three times their body weight in food every day.

None of which you have, nor are you going to magically learn how to do it in the hour or so you'd have before your heart explodes or your brain fries from the attempt at keeping yourself at 37C.

Square/cube law for heat dissipation is an unforgiving bitch.

Something interesting related to this is that small creatures with very high metabolisms like this usually have much shorter lifespans, usually a few years at most. The naked mole rat can live up to 30 years, but will also apparently greatly suppress its metabolism when in low oxygen environments or during food shortages.

On the other hand very large mammals such as elephants and whales etc have much longer lifespans, as do large primates including humans. Really any largish mammal is usually gonna live quite a bit longer than the really small ones. They also have much slower metabolisms than the very small mammals.