We haven’t seen this much energy since the Polar Vortex. It’s not just because I’m a 12th man living near enough to Seattle to hear our cheering fans (I’m only 250 miles away).
But this Sunday the energy will be biochemical.
The 325 million gallons of beer that will be drunk during Super Bowl XLIX Sunday is more than a gallon per person in the United States. Almost as much as the amount of water that will flow over Niagara Falls during Katy Perry’s halftime songs.
Add to that
- 70 million pounds of avocados,
- 30 million pounds of chips,
- 6million pizzas,
- 5 million pounds of pretzels,
- 4 million pounds of popcorn,
- 3 million pounds of nuts, and
- 50 million pounds of “other”.
So we can be forgiven for being awed by this amount of gastronomical energy.
The 2 million rice cakes consumed will be the only nod to health consciousness.
My own gut will convert a small portion of these calories into 120 Watt-hours of energy, 30 of which I will put to actual work, like raising the temperature of beer in my stomach from 45°F to 98.6°F at the pressure of a Belichick ball.
Only Thanksgiving processes more calories in the American gut. But the joule of this Super Bowl crown is the billion-plus chicken wings that will be consumed in the few hours after the pre-game show begins.
The 600 million chickens that will provide their arms for these morsels had hoped that deflate-gate would negate the game and give them a reprieve. But that pipe-dream is belied by the dozens of $4-million-apiece 30-second ads, the 3 million paid to the players for a tough day’s work, the $500 million dollars in ticket sales, and the $300 million that will be spent for lodging Saturday night by those fans.
At least Katy Perry will be performing for free.
The superhuman amount of chemical energy that will be released by passage of this mass of foodstuffs through a hundred and ten million intestinal tracts will be equivalent to 250 million kWhrs of electricity, equal to the total output of America’s 100 nuclear power plants during the game.
Since American’s will spend $30 billion to buy this food, but only $37 million in energy to cook it, the market is way in favor of the food industry relative to the power industry.
But we should all be truly thankful that America produces such cheap energy that the annual output of a square-mile solar array can be put exclusively to grill, fry, bake, boil, chill, pour and blend this huge amount of food to the point where it can fuel the focused attention of 110 million Americans on 44 humans pounding themselves into the turf.
Even more amazing is that this 250,000,000 kWhrs will only cost us thirty cents a head, a paltry sum compared to the cost of the average $6,000 Super Bowl ticket.
A real steal.
