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Food for Fun and Thought

Super Bowl: A Big Game And Lots Of Food

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SuperbowlGamedayFoodFacts

 

Even though professional football — as we know it – has been around since 1920, the first Super Bowl, the annual championship of the National Football League (NFL), was held in January 1967.

Although not an official holiday, Super Bowl Sunday certainly has assumed the trappings of a holiday both in the US and in many expat communities. It is the most watched annual television program in the US and ranks second (Thanksgiving is first) as the day for most food consumption. Over 20 million Americans attend Super Bowl parties and half of all Americans say they would rather go to a Super Bowl party than to a New Year’s Eve party.

It’s amazing how food has become associated with football — from tailgating to the food for the game.  There are plenty of choices and you can eat well — and even have room for some indulgence — if you have a plan and don’t get sidetracked by the array of very caloric and usually very fatty foods.

Think of all the hand to mouth munching on chips, dips, and wings; a swig or two or three; a cookie here and there.  And then there’s the “real food” at halftime – or maybe there was pizza first followed by a selection of subs. By the end of the game do you have a clue about how much – or even what — you have popped into your mouth?

Super Bowl Food Facts

  • About one in twenty (9 million) Americans watch the game at a restaurant or a bar.
  • Americans double their average daily consumption of snacks on Super Bowl Sunday, downing more than 33 million pounds in one day.
  • The average Super Bowl watcher consumes 1,200 calories. Potato chips are the favorite and account for 27 billion calories and 1.8 billion fat grams — the same as 4 million pounds of fat or equal to the weight of 13,000 NFL offensive linemen at 300 pounds each.
  • Nearly one in eight (13%) Americans order takeout/delivery food for the Super Bowl. The most popular choices are pizza (58%), chicken wings (50%), and subs/sandwiches (20%). Almost 70% of Super Bowl watchers eat a slice (or two or three) during the game.
  • The amount of chicken wings eaten clocks in at 90 million pounds or 450 million individual wings. It would take 19 chicken breasts to get the same amount of fat that you usually get from a dozen Buffalo wings.
  • On Super Bowl Sunday Americans eat an estimated 14,500 tons of potato chips, 4000 tons of tortilla chips, and eight million pounds of avocados. Five ounces of nacho cheese Doritos equals around 700 calories. You’d have to run the length of 123 football fields to burn them off.  You’d have to eat 175 baby carrots or 700 celery sticks to get the same number of calories.
  • According to 7-eleven, sales of antacids increase by 20% on the day after Super Bowl.
  • Pizza restaurants love Super Bowl Sunday – it’s their busiest day of the year, according to the National Restaurant Association. Papa John’s, Pizza Hut, and Domino’s sell twice as many pies as they do on any other day. Domino’s expects to sell 11 million slices.
  • The Hass Avocado Board predicts that over Super Bowl weekend approximately100 million pounds of guacamole will be eaten – and approximately 14,500 tons of chips are used to scoop it up.
  • About 2 million cases of beer are sold every year for Super Bowl – which might explain why 6% of Americans call in sick for work the next day.

How Many Calories Do You Eat With Your Movie?

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Movie Calories

Have you ever walked into a movie theater and you’re immediately craving popcorn? Why not – we’ve been conditioned that hot, buttery, salty popcorn goes with a movie. And, there’s no escaping the smell of freshly popped (and sometimes not so freshly popped) corn and the (often annoying) sound of people around you scratching around in their popcorn buckets and crunching down on the buttery (oily) kernels.

Your senses are assaulted: start filling the bucket!  Doesn’t matter if it’s a coconut oil mix instead of butter sprayed into the bucket or that the naked popcorn (before the oil and salt) tastes like cardboard. The siren call of movie theater popcorn is often too strong to overcome.

I Don’t Care, I’m Going To Have It Anyway

There’s no way I would suggest that you – or I – should avoid movie theater popcorn and candy. But perhaps a compromise?

How about a small bag instead of a big bucket – water instead of a huge soda? Forget the combo deals and the upgrades – is it worth it to you to spend 50 cents more for a larger size and tons more calories? If Raisinets – or Goobers – or Milk Duds are your thing, the same is true – buy the smaller size or split it with a friend.

Some eyeopeners:

  • The size of popcorn buckets and soda varies significantly between theater chains. One theater’s medium tub of popcorn might hold 10 cups but another’s might hold up to 20. One chain’s medium soda can be 32 ounces but another’s is 44 ounces — one chain’s small soda might be 16 ounces but another’s is 32 ounces.
  • The average small movie popcorn with “buttery” topping has about 600 calories — about the same as a quarter-pound cheeseburger (550 calories). The average large movie popcorn with “buttery” topping has about 1,270 calories — about the same as two large pieces of fried chicken (800 calories), a cup of mashed potatoes (230), and a 16-ounce soda (200 calories).
  • A combo with a large soda (48 ounces) and a large popcorn with “buttery” topping has about 1,700 calories.
  • An average small movie soda (23 ounces) has about 14 teaspoons of sugar and a little over 200 calories. An average large movie soda (47 ounces) has about 30 teaspoons of sugar and around 450 calories.

FYI: Average Calories In Movie Theater Food

(Note the serving sizes, movie theater popcorn bags and buckets and boxes of candy are often huge and may be double or triple the size shown below.)

Popcorn, Nachos, Soft Pretzel

  • Buttered popcorn, small, 5 cups:  470 calories, 35g fat
  • Buttered popcorn, large, 20 cups:  1640 calories, 126g fat
  • Cheese nachos, large (4 oz):  1100 calories, 60g fat
  • Soft pretzel, large (5 oz):  480 calories, 5g fat

Soda and Lemonade

  • Coke, 18 ounces: 218 calories, 0g fat
  • Coke, 44 ounces:  534 calories, 0g fat
  • Minute Maid Lemonade, 18 ounces:  248 calories, 0g fat
  • Minute Maid Lemonade, 44 ounces:  605 calories, 0g fat

Candy

  • Junior Mints, 3-ounce box:  360 calories, 7g fat
  • Sno Caps, 3.1-ounce box:  300 calories, 15g fat
  • Milk Duds, 3-ounce box:  370 calories, 12g fat
  • Raisinets, 3.5-ounce bag:  400 calories, 16g fat
  • Goobers, 3.5-ounce box:  500 calories, 35g fat
  • Twizzlers, 6-ounce bag:  570 calories, 4g fat
  • M&Ms, 5.3-ounce bag:  750 calories, 32g fat
  • Peanut M&Ms, 5.3-ounce bag:  790 calories, 40g fat
  • Reese’s Pieces, 8-ounce bag:  1160 calories, 60g fat

Don’t Tempt Fate: Remember To Eat Your New Year’s Good Luck Food!

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NewYearsFoodGraphic

What’s your New Year’s tradition? Do you eat fish, beans, cakes with coins, grapes, or pickled herring?

Around the world food and symbolism play important roles in New Year’s celebrations not just to celebrate but often to bring luck, fortune, and plenty (both money and food), and health.

What Not To Eat (Hint: Don’t Look Or Move Back)

Although different cultures have foods that are supposed to be eaten at the stroke of midnight or sometime on January 1st, there are also foods not to eat. Things that move or scratch backwards — like lobsters, chickens, and turkeys — are to be avoided because they symbolize moving backward instead of progressing forward. To avoid any looking back at past struggles or setbacks, or only things that move forward should be eaten.

Want a full pantry? Some cultures leave a little food on the table or on the plate to guarantee – or at least to hedge your bet – that you’ll have a well-stocked kitchen during the coming year.

Why Tempt Fate – Here Are Some Lucky Foods To Consider

There are many New Year’s foods and traditions — far too numerous to list. Wouldn’t you want to consider piling some luck on your plate on January 1st? A little extra insurance can’t hurt!

Some common types of good luck foods:

  • Round foods shaped like coins, such as beans, black eyed peas, and legumes, symbolize financial prosperity, as do greens such as cabbage, collard greens, and kale, which resemble paper money. Golden colored foods like corn bread also symbolize financial rewards in the New Year. Examples of round good luck foods are: lentils in Italy and Brazil, pancakes in Germany, round fruit in the Philippines, and black-eyed peas in the Southern US. Green leafy vegetables that symbolize paper money are collard greens in the Southern US and kale in Denmark.
  • Pork symbolizes prosperity, abundance, plenty of food, and the fat of the land (think pork barrel legislation). The pig, which symbolizes plentiful food in the New Year, is considered an animal of progress because it moves forward as it roots around for food. Pork products appear as ham, sausage, ham hocks, pork ribs, and even pig’s knuckles. Years ago, if your family had a pig you were doing well! Some examples of good luck pork products are roast suckling pig with a four leaf clover in its mouth in Hungary, pork sausage with lentils in Italy, and pork with sauerkraut in Germany.
  • In some countries, having food on your table and/or plates at the stroke of midnight is a sign that you’ll have food throughout the year.
  • Seafood, with the exception of the backward swimming lobster, symbolizes abundance and plenty and is a symbol of good luck. Fish also symbolize fertility because they produce multiple eggs at a time. It’s important that a fish be served whole, with the head and tail intact, to symbolize a good beginning and a good end. Examples are herring and carp in Germany, pickled herring in Poland, boiled cod in
Denmark, dried salted cod in Italy, red snapper in Japan, and carp in
Vietnam.
  • Eating sweet food in order to have a sweet year is common in a number of countries. In Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Cuba,
Ecuador, and
Peru, 12 sweet grapes, one for each month of the year, are eaten at midnight in hope of having 12 sweet months. The order and sweetness of the grape is important – for instance, if the fifth grape is a bit sour, May might be a bit rocky. In some places the goal is to eat all of the grapes before the last stroke of midnight and some countries eat a 13th grape just for good measure. There seems to be an awful lot of hedging of bets all around the world.
  • Another symbol for good luck involves eating food that’s in a ring shape – like doughnuts or ring shaped cakes. This represents coming full circle to successfully complete the year. Examples are Rosca de Reyes in Mexico and Olie Bollen (doughnuts) in the Netherlands.
  • Long noodles signify a long life. The Japanese use long Buckwheat Soba noodles – but you shouldn’t cut or break them because that could shorten life.
  • Chinese New Year, an all East and Southeast Asia celebration, is known as “Spring Festival” in China, which begins on the first day of the first month in the traditional Chinese lunar calendar. It’s filled with tradition and ritual and celebrated with lucky red envelopes filled with money, lion and dragon dances, drums, fireworks, firecrackers, and feasting on traditional sweet sticky rice cake and round savory dumplings that symbolize never-ending wealth.
  • Sweets are symbolic of a sweet year and/or good luck. Cakes and breads with coins or trinkets baked into them are common in many countries. Greeks have a round cake called Vasilopita – made with a coin baked inside — which is cut after midnight. Whoever gets the coin is lucky throughout the year. Jews use apples dipped in honey on the Jewish New Year, Norwegians use rice pudding with an almond inside, Koreans use sweet fruits, and Egyptians have candy for children.

Fill your plate with a serving of luck. As for resolutions — they’re not quite as tasty as most (not all) food traditions, but they do have longevity — they date back 4000 years to the ancient Babylonians!

Happy and Healthy 2015!

Remember to eat well because you really are what you eat.

Should Santa Cut Down On The Cookies?

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SantaCookieGraphic4Does Santa have a weight challenge? It wouldn’t be surprising with all of the cookies and milk left out for him on Christmas Eve! Plus, he uses a sleigh pulled by reindeer so he just slides down the chimney. That might be tough with his jolly belly and a big bag of presents slung over his shoulder — but it doesn’t use up a whole lot of calories.

On Christmas Eve Santa visits an estimated 92 million households. Walking.about.com figures that if all the households were evenly distributed across the earth, Santa would travel 0.78 miles between houses — for a total of 71,760,000 (71.8 million) miles.

How Much Does Santa Weigh?

According to NORAD, Santa tips the scale at 260 pounds and he’s 5’7” tall, giving him a BMI of 40.7 — which, unfortunately, makes him obese.

Walking.about.com, guessing Santa’s weight to be 250 pounds and assuming he’s a pretty fast walker — he does have to get his deliveries done in one night — estimates that Santa burns 13 billion calories on Christmas eve.

Does Santa Need All The Milk and Cookies Left Out For Him?

Two small cookies and a cup of skim milk (no full fat dairy for Santa, he might have cholesterol issues) clock in at about 200 calories. If Santa snacked at each of the 92 million households he visits he would chow down on 18.4 billion calories.

That would mean he would gain 1,529,350 pounds every Christmas.

If he walked instead of rode in his sleigh – Rudolph is probably well-trained enough to navigate the sleigh full of presents — he’d have to circle the earth 1,183 times to burn off the extra calories from the milk and cookies.

What If Santa Snacked On Veggies Instead Of Cookies?

If Santa had a cup of carrot and celery sticks rather than cookies and milk at each house, he’d be eating just 50 calories — which would add up to 4.6 billion calories for the evening. Since he burns off 13 billion calories by walking, he’d actually lose so much weight that he’d disappear from sight.

Maybe the best idea for him would be to have a nice combination of veggies at most households and cookies and low fat milk every thousand or so households. That probably would keep him happy, energetic, and in caloric balance!

But … Santa has been delivering presents and eating cookies for a very long time. He magically reappears every year as jolly as ever. He seems to be doing quite nicely with his usual routine, don’t you think?

Ho Ho Ho!