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Your body burns food using the same chemistry as a fire, in many small controlled steps.

Biology Facts, sourced to NCBI Bookshelf: Molecular Biology of the Cell.

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The overall accounting is identical: sugar plus oxygen gives carbon dioxide, water and energy, and it releases the same amount either way. A fire lets it all go at once as heat, which a cell could not survive. Instead the reaction is broken into a long chain of small steps, each releasing a manageable amount and most of it captured into a carrier molecule rather than lost. It is the difference between an explosion and a paycheck.

The claim comes from NCBI Bookshelf: Molecular Biology of the Cell.

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