• Question: Why do living things need food/water to live?

    Asked by eleanorbeedles to Sarah, Paul, Mark, Lily, Laura on 23 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Mark Roberts

      Mark Roberts answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      We need food to make energy and also provide the building blocks to make all the parts of our bodies / cells and all living things are like that

      As for water all living processes happen in a water solution so we need water to allow our chemistry to work! Without it our enzymes don’t work and our cells fall apart.

    • Photo: Lily Asquith

      Lily Asquith answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      We need food and water for energy so that our bodies keep working. Even when we are asleep, our bodies are still using energy to keep our heart pumping etc.

    • Photo: Laura Maliszewski

      Laura Maliszewski answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      Every living thing needs water because we are all made of mostly water. Even tiny bacteria and giant whales need water for the basic chemistry of their bodies.

      We need food to provide energy, but some living things like plants make their own food from sunlight. When we eat plants, we’re taking advantage of their hard work!

    • Photo: Sarah Bardsley

      Sarah Bardsley answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      Food gives us energy to live. And 60% of a person’s body weight is water. We lose a certain amount through sweat and urine. If we didn’t replace it our body couldn’t survive.

    • Photo: Paul Roche

      Paul Roche answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      This is a question for the life scientists, but as a physicist I know that all living things require energy (which we get from food), and water is essential to keep cells healthy. When we are looking for places where alien life might be found, we look for places where liquid water might exist, such as below the surfaces of the icy moons of Jupiter for example. Wherever we find life on Earth, we also find liquid water, so that’s a bit clue to where to look in the rest of the solar system.

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