Wednesday, May 16, 2012

What May 15-16th Mean To Me: Popcorn

I've been sitting at the computer for a half hour trying to think of something to write, and can think of nothing other than the popcorn I'm shoving in my maw.  I eat a lot of popcorn, and why shouldn't I?  It's a healthy light snack that isn't all that expensive.  It's not the tastiest thing in the world, but it's light, fun (!), and it occupies time while I watch TV.  Plus, I enjoy watching the kernels explode in the air popper. It's a bit of a thrill. Plus, it's rather efficient.  No wasted kernels!  Anyone who eats microwave popcorn is a sucker.  Yeah, I said it, all you kernel wasters. 


Sue me

Anyway, it got me thinking about how many popped popcorn kernels I eat in a year.  The suggested serving size for my airpopper is a half cup full of kernels, which, according to the Google, is about 800 kernels per serving.  That sounds about right.  Some weeks I eat it everyday, some just once or twice or not at all, but I think it's safe to split the difference and say I eat popcorn 3.5 times a week. 

800x3.5= 2,800 popcorn kernels a week. 

2,800x52=145,600 popcorn kernels a year.   I assume I did that math right?  I can never tell because I'm that bad at it.

I guess that seems like a lot, but I wonder what kind of receptacle would that fill?  A trash can?  Half a trash can?  A quarter of a ball pit at Chuck E Cheese?  I often wonder if it's bad to eat this much popcorn, like it'll lead to some sort of popcorn cancer.  What a thing to die from. 

Regardless, I'm sorry that you'll never get the 2 minutes it took you to read this back. 

2 comments:

  1. You know how people say that movie theaters make most of their money from concessions? Well, most of THAT money has to come from popcorn. I had a summer job at a theater many years ago, and I vaguely recall one of the guys there saying that a huge sack of kernels (that was so heavy I could barely carry it ... which I guess isn't saying much) cost them about $10. If that was true, their profit margin on popcorn must have been somewhere around eleventy billion percent.

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    1. I actually remember reading an article about that...it was like a 900-1000 percent mark up!

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