Semi-realistic Regeneration and corresponding Increased Consumption

[vicky_molokh]

Greetings, all!

Due to closer scrutiny towards certain mutations and biomods, I'm interested in making the Regular Regeneration (1HP/hour) biomod at least semi-realistic in my campaign. That's an approximately 50-fold increase in natural healing capabilities compared to an average human (24HP per day instead of ½HP per day). Now, a person eats 3 GURPS meals per day, but most of that isn't spent on healing HP. So the question becomes: assuming that the process of regeneration has an impressively high coefficient of efficiency, just how much extra food would be required when the organism kicks into such a high gear? I'm assuming at least some of the damaged-but-retained biological material could be recycled by the nanites/weird-phagocite-and-mobile-stem-based-repair-cell-system, though I'm not sure at which point the semi-realistic turns into outright physics-defying. But even while building materials can be somewhat recycled, energy needs to come from somewhere - just how energy-intensive would be a 50-fold boost of healing, in terms of extra food consumption? Finally, how much of a buffer can be retained by using additional internal storage of nutrients/slow energy, purely through improvements to the biochemistry of storage (i.e. without resorting to making the person fat)?

Thanks in advance!