11/84Dollars spent by Americans annually for packaged cookies: $2,400,000,000
Dollars spent by Americans annually for pornography: $7,000,000,000
Value of the average garden’s yield of fruits and vegetables: $414
8/84Percentage of Chicago restaurant managers who say they allow patrons to smoke cigarettes: 84
11/85Number of Fabergé Imperial eggs owned by Malcolm Forbes: 11
By the Kremlin: 10
2/85Percentage of Americans who eat their evening meal between 5
Pounds of chemical additives: 9
3/85Average number of maggots the U.S. Food and Drug Administration permits per 100 grams of canned mushrooms: 20
3/85Percentage of the annual U.S. potato crop that is french fried: 22
5/85Rank of Mother’s Day among all holidays in the number of Americans eating out: 1
The average New Englander: 23
12/86Average number of fund-raising dinners held each night in Beverly Hills: 6
11/87Black-market price of ten pounds of lean meat in Romania (in cartons of Kent cigarettes): 1
12/87Price of a pound of reindeer meat at Lobel’s Prime Meats in New York City: $14.98
12/87World rank of the Soviet Union’s annual cabbage crop: 1
12/87Rank of China’s annual cauliflower crop: 1
2/87Price of a night’s stay in an underwater room at Jules’ Undersea Lodge in Key Largo (including food and air): $300
6/87Rank of martinis among all drinks sold in bars and restaurants today: 2
7/87Amount consumers paid for food packaging that year: $28,000,000,000
Portion of household trash in industrialized countries that consists of packaging: 1/2
9/87Percentage of the members of the Texas Restaurant Association that serve chicken-fried steak: 90
1/88Percentage of telephones that are in the kitchen: 31
2/88Amount that Bryan Miller, the New York Times food critic, spends on restaurant meals each year: $80,000
2/88Recipes in Aggies, Moms, and Apple Pie, a cookbook published by Texas A&M, that call for a can of cream soup: 41
5/88Chances that a restaurant bill is incorrect: 1 in 8
7/88Percentage of all ice cream consumed by Muscovites that is vanilla: 95
1/89Pounds of fish consumed each day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California: 125
Pounds of fish consumed each day at Le Bernardin restaurant in New York City: 400
10/89Estimated total value of the candy distributed last Halloween: $1,000,000,000
11/89Number of pages of his newspaper a Filipino editor says military personnel forced him to eat at gunpoint in May: 2
11/89Estimated number of calories a person consumes during Thanksgiving dinner: 2,250
Estimated number of calories a Thanksgiving turkey consumes in its lifetime: 110,000
6/89Annual per capita mushroom consumption the EPA assumes in determining acceptable pesticide levels, in pounds: 1.2
Annual per capita mushroom consumption, according to the Department of Agriculture, in pounds: 3.7
6/89Daily wage a French company paid U.S. volunteers in 1988 to pick sprayed crops to test pesticides’ effects: $100
9/89Percentage of fast-food restaurant employees who say they have stolen food or money from their employer: 62
9/89Estimated amount of grease New Orleans restaurants disposed of last year, in gallons: 2,000,000
10/90Estimated number of M&M’s sold each day in the United States: 200,000,000
10/90Rank of coffee, alcohol, and soft drinks, among the foods most often consumed or mentioned on prime-time TV: 1,2,3
11/90Percentage of Americans who say that the leftovers in their refrigerators are more than four weeks old: 5
12/90Price of a gold-plated refrigerator from the Mitsukoshi department store in Tokyo: $6,181
11/91Number of cellular phones checked in the cloakroom by patrons each week at Le Cirque, the Manhattan restaurant: 3
11/91Estimated number of “Schwarzkopf filets” served since March at Gallagher’s, the Manhattan steakhouse: 15,000
12/91Price of a single-serving pizza at Beijing’s Pizza Hut, expressed as a portion of the average worker’s weekly salary: 1/5
12/91Number of pizzas Moscow’s Pizza Hut delivered to the Russian parliament building during the Soviet coup: 260
12/91Estimated number of cookies that will be left out for Santa Claus this Christmas Eve: 84,000,000
3/91Percentage of Americans who say they would like to have dinner with George Bush: 7
3/91Percentage increase, during 1991, in the number of people seeking emergency food aid in U.S. cities: 26
4/91Number of bees that invaded a Bayport, New York, house while the owners were on vacation last spring: 20,000
5/91Portion of all cars that will have a microwave oven in the year 2000, according to the Campbell Soup Company: 1/4
5/91Percentage of fast-food restaurant workers who admit to doing “slow, sloppy work on purpose”: 22
7/91Number of years a University of South Florida engineering professor has studied the crunching of potato chips: 6
8/91Number of times Nixon stopped to autograph food-ration cards during his trip to the Soviet Union last March: 1
10/92Number of the five U.S. Olympic basketball team members pictured on Kellogg’s cereal boxes who are white: 3
10/92Number of calories in a chocolate chip cookie baked according to Hillary Clinton’s recipe: 68
Number of calories in a chocolate chip cookie baked according to Barbara Bush’s recipe: 75
10/92Number of the seven most widely consumed food crops in the world that are native to the Americas: 4
10/92Amount of candy corn produced in the United States each year, expressed in ears: 2,250,000
12/92Price of a box of pina colada-flavored candy canes from the Spangler Candy Company of Bryan, Ohio: $1.89
2/92Percentage increase, during 1991, in the number of New Hampshire residents receiving food stamps: 47
4/92Sales of Tupperware in Japan last year: $100,000,000
10/93Percentage of Missouri’s corn crop destroyed by rain and flooding this year: 40
10/93Percentage of South Carolina’s corn crop destroyed by heat and drought: 66
11/93Number of hamburgers called for in White Castle’s recipe for turkey-stuffing: 10
12/93Rank of Snickers, among the most popular candy bars in Russia: 1
2/93Price of a lunch of lobster, asparagus, and poached pears, at the Treasury Department executive dining room: $4.75
5/93Total amount spent on candy last Mother’s Day, per American mother: $4.70
6/93Price of golf, dinner, beer, and a “cart dance” by a topless female caddie at Fort Worth’s New Orleans Nights club: $620
9/93Estimated number of nuclear reactors it would take to supply the energy consumed by U.S. refrigerators: 25
9/93Number of different kinds of refrigerator magnets sold at the Dan Quayle Center gift shop, in Huntington, Indiana: 3
1/94Hours the average Chinese worker must work to earn the price of an ice-cream cone at Beijing’s new Baskin-Robbins: 7
4/94Amount the federal government spent on pickle research last year: $277,000
6/94Age, in years, of a piece of wedding fruitcake on display at the Grover Cleveland Birthplace, in Caldwell, New Jersey: 106
6/94Membership of the Arcigola Slow Food Movement, a group founded in Italy to protest the proliferation of fast food: 50,000
1/95First prize awarded the creator of Savory Spam Cheesecake at the L.A. County Fair’s Spam Recipe Contest last year: $100
10/95Amount an auditor estimated last year that Oregon could save each year by feeding prisoners less food: $62,000
2/95Sales of Tupperware through TuppNet since it was introduced on the Internet last March: $1,300
3/95Number of years McDonald’s has been suing 2 unemployed Britons for distributing pamphlets calling its food “unhealthy”: 4
3/95Number of hamburgers thrown at a man attempting to rob an Oklahoma City McDonald’s last July before he fled: 1
5/95Boxes of cookies the Washington, D.C., Girl Scouts must sell each year to cover their liability premiums: 87,000
5/95Damages paid by the Kellogg Company this year after an Ohio man claimed a flaming Pop-Tart ignited his kitchen: $2,400
7/95Gallons of onion ice cream sold last summer at Vidalia restaurant in Washington, D.C.: 10
7/95Number of people who developed food poisoning after attending a Connecticut Food Association reception last spring: 57
9/95Number of people injured during a cheese-rolling competition held last May in Cheltenham, England: 18
1/96Number of L.A.’s Mo’ Better Meaty Meat Burger restaurant specials that are named for O.J. Simpson trial participants: 4
12/96Number of ethnic restaurants Bill Clinton sampled at last July’s Taste of Chicago: 8
2/96Percentage of Americans who say that Ronald Reagan was the president who “best personified cool ranch tortilla chips”: 25
Percentage who say that Abraham Lincoln was the president who “best personified pretzel logs”: 37
2/96Years in jail a California man was sentenced to last year after his third burglary offense, the theft of four cookies: 26
4/96Number of times Bob Dole said “Bob Dole” during a speech to the Iowa Pork Producers Association in January: 12
7/96Average amount of food an American woman would have to consume each day in order to eat like a bird, in pounds: 134
8/96Number of Ben & Jerry’s Peace Pops sold each week through Pentagon vending machines: 12
8/96Percentage by which the Pillsbury Bake-Off increased its grand prize last year: 1,900
10/97Estimated number of cans of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup spilled on a San Diego interstate last February: 55,800
10/97Maximum distance, in feet, that a pumpkin has ever been mechanically hurled without the use of explosives: 2,710
11/97Amount Bob Dole spent last year on political advertising on the Food Channel: $22,000
12/97Rank of milk among professional Santas’ favorite drinks with cookies, according to the American Dairy Association: 1
2/97Number of candy hearts that the New England Confectionery Company made last year: 8,000,000,000
5/97Rank of Food Lion among U.S. employers that have paid the largest fines for overtime- and minimum-wage violations: 1
6/97Rank of Salt Lake City in per capita Jell-O consumption: 1
7/97Number of buffalo-meat hot dogs sold per baseball game at Atlanta’s Turner Field last summer: 2,350
7/97Maximum fine for bringing one stick of chewing gum into Singapore: $10,000
8/97First edition of Joy of Cooking not to include a recipe for a soup made from endangered turtles: 1997
1/98Number of hours a Moscow hotel flew a Microsoft flag within view of Red Square last fall when Bill Gates visited: 36
Number of lunches Gates ate in Moscow that were not from McDonald’s: 0
12/98Price that New York City’s Lower East Side Tenement Museum charges for an evening in a turn-of-the-century kitchen: $750
12/98Year in which Christmas celebrations, plum pudding, and mince pie were outlawed in England: 1647
3/98Maximum ratio of curvature to length allowed a Grade 1 cucumber under the E.U.’s new produce regulations: 1:10
3/98Value of the food and medicine purchased since December 1996 with Iraq’s “Oil for Food” proceeds, per Iraqi: 25¢
4/98Ratio of the average amount a U.S. family spent on food, clothing, and shelter last year to what it spent on taxes: 3:4
3/99Date and time of the annual pi celebration held at San Francisco’s Exploratorium: 3/14, 1:59
4/99Miles per hour at which a New York TV station clocked a police van driving Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to lunch last year: 75
8/99Rank of broccoli and peaches, respectively, among U.S.-grown produce with the highest residual pesticide levels: 18,1
8/99Percentage of the medical supplies bought since 1996 under Iraq’s oil-for-food program that has been distributed: 43
8/99Ratio of eggs rolled on the White House lawn last Easter to bombs dropped on Serbia during its Orthodox holy week: 1:1
2/00Ratio of the price of a 30-second Super Bowl ad to what Pizza Hut paid last fall for an ad on a Russian space rocket: 2:1
3/00Damages awarded Pizza Hut last winter after it sued a competitor whose ads claimed it made “better” pizza: $467,620
3/00 Number of rented 40-foot refrigerator trailers the LAPD uses to house biological evidence: 4
4/00Estimated portion of whale, dolphin, and porpoise meat consumed in Japan last year whose pollution levels were toxic: 1/2
4/00Maximum tonnage by which pollution reduced China’s potential annual wheat production between 1994 and 1996: 10,000
5/00Price of a sautéed lobster gilded with 24-carat gold at Boston’s Biba restaurant last New Year’s Eve: $44
6/00Hours of cooking required to remove the “toxins” from tomatoes, according to an 1860 women’s magazine: 3
12/01Chance that a “GMO-free”food product studied last April contained no genetically modified ingredients: 1 in 5
Percentage change since then in the sales of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts: +110
4/01Tons of food suitable for human consumption wasted in the United States each year: 48,000,000
5/01Days after a rare turtle died in Miami last spring that a local aquarium staff member made it into a soup: 1
6/01Average number of food-poisoning incidents in the United States each day: 208,000
1/02Number of Pop-Tarts dropped on Afghanistan as part of U.S. airborne food aid in the first month of bombing: 2,400,000
5/02Number of New York City restaurants whose use of the term “Viagra” on the menu has been protested by Pfizer: 3
6/02Ratio of the number of Americans killed by terrorists last year to the estimated number who died from food poisoning: 3:5
6/02Barrels of oil required to raise U.S. cattle for beef each year: 155,000,000
6/02Days the University of Georgia heated its campus last winter by burning chicken fat and other leftover food grease: 21
6/02Ratio of the amount of food thrown out by South Korea last year to the amount consumed by North Korea: 1:1
6/02Percentage of new state laws involving biotechnology that increase penalties for destroying genetically modified crops: 70
10/03Chances that farmed salmon contains PCB levels that are 4 times higher than those found in beef: 7 in 10
10/03Chance on any given day that the only “vegetables” served in a U.S. public school are potatoes: 1 in 2
3/03Percentage change since 1990 in the annual number of large-scale outbreaks of U.S. school-cafeteria food poisoning: +100
4/03Pounds of grits and other grains to be donated to fill this year’s food-budget gap at the South Carolina governor’s mansion: 1,000
6/03Estimated number of Ding Dongs manufactured per minute at St. Louis’s Interstate Brands factory: 1,000
8/03Number of candy-bar wrappers that Cadbury’s new anti-obesity campaign offers to exchange for a basketball: 90
Minimum hours of basketball required for an 85-pound child to burn off the calories from that many candy bars: 100
9/03Amount New Zealand’s Fire Service spent this year on a TV campaign against cooking while drunk: $201,300
9/03Estimated acres of forest Henry David Thoreau burned down in 1844 trying to cook fish he had caught for dinner: 300
11/04Number of U.S. McDonald’s franchises whose drive-through order taking has been outsourced to another state: 2
Average number of seconds by which orders placed at these franchises are processed more quickly than at others: 30
3/04Cost of testing each slaughtered U.S. cow for mad cow disease per pound of beef produced: 5¢
Ratio of the number of cows France tests each week to the number the United States has tested in the last decade: 7:6
3/04Estimated percentage of British food-poisoning infections caused by bottled water: 12
3/04Days after Italian magistrates began investigating food conglomerate Parmalat last December that its former CEO was jailed: 8
3/04Number of monkeys fed a nine-course meal at last year’s Chinese Banquet for Monkeys in Lopburi, Thailand: 3,000
6/04Percentage of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip who lack regular access to food: 40
Percentage who are at risk of losing regular access to food if conditions there persist or deteriorate: 31
6/04Chances that a sixth-grader at one Oklahoma City school was suspended for being disruptive during lunch last March 24: 4 in 5
7/04Number of fried chocolate sandwiches served at a British hotel chain in April after their debut: 1,256
8/04Ratio of the number of cicada eggs per square mile of southern New Jersey to the number of stars in the Milky Way: 4:5
10/05Points a player earns for delivering a parcel of medicine, in the U.N. World Food Programme’s video game: 250
10/05Years after the Watts riots that the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation trademarked “Burn Baby Burn” for a hot sauce: 40
12/05Portion of British food aid for Katrina evacuees that still sits unused in an Arkansas warehouse: 7/10
5/05Average price of a Grāpple, a Washington State apple made with artificial grape flavoring: $1.25
8/05Fine levied last year on a restaurant in southwest China for serving sushi atop naked women: $242
9/05Number of Danish graduate students who last December released a copyright-free recipe for an “open-source beer”: 15
12/06Number of worldwide incidents last Christmas of “Santarchy,” which involves roving mobs of unruly Santas: 29
Number of fruitcakes that drunken Santas catapulted into the air at the event in Portland, Oregon: 6
4/06Estimated number of Marshmallow Peeps that will be consumed around Easter this month: 800,000,000