Science for all newsletter The cost of giving birth

The Hindu’s weekly Science for All newsletter explains all things Science, without the jargon. Some previous studies had acknowledged the indirect costs and estimated it to be 5-25% of the total energy expenditure. reported that for mammals, indirect costs often accounted for as much as 90% of the total energy expense. Among humans, indirect costs accounted for some 96% of the estimated 50,000 kilocalories required to reproduce. Finally, they combined the indirect and direct costs, derived from the energy ‘contained’ in the newborn to estimate the total amount of energy spent during a pregnancy.