To be fair, our food to energy conversion is so efficient because the foods we eat are already in a very energy ready state. Our bodies don't bother with stuff that is harder to convert.
true, but recycling proteins is also pretty amazing. These are the most complex machines we know of, elegant atomic factories that do the seemingly impossible... and you dip them in acid and then you can pop them apart like a string of beads, to be reassembled into a totally new molecular miracle.