John Grindrod: Our fascination with big-time food numbers

With both of the biggest eating holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas, now squarely in the 2011 rearview mirror, there will, no doubt, be the usual January cessation of reporting on food, as in how many pounds of it were served at various holiday gatherings across the country.

Now, as a sports guy, I will tell you that I've always been fascinated by numbers when they take the form of statistics, not when they appeared in calculus problems during my salad days, as my old Lima Central Catholic grade cards reflect.

As a baseball-loving kid before I became a baseball-loving adult, I knew how to figure out an earned run average and a slugging percentage a whole lot earlier and more accurately than any long-division or story problem I was ever given.

So, when I see articles in the paper about holiday feasts, I'm always interested in the numbers, or what used to be called in boxing, the tale of the tape when measuring the height and weight and reach of a couple of pugilists.

The first such feast story I read this past holiday season was on Thanksgiving morning. The story was Los Angeles-based and involved some celebrities who, I'm sure, wore themselves out patting each other on the back for coming down from The Hills, as in Beverly, long enough to serve some meals to the homeless.

Of course, there was a Kardashian, the recently divorced Kim; an old Hollywood icon, Kirk Douglass; actor Blair Underwood, who once cashed some pretty sizable checks playing a lawyer on “LA Law”; and Jennifer Love Hewitt, who, I'm guessing, is an actress, although I don't think I could pick her out of a police lineup. Of course, in the account, the numbers were there, as in 3,000 pounds of turkey, 700 pounds of mashed potatoes, 80 gallons of gravy and 600 pies, no mention of stuffing or whipped cream.

Closer to home, the annual feed at the Civic Center, started by the Chester Carey family in 1989 and now sponsored by Jerry Lewis' McDonald's Restaurants, came in with its own impressive tale of the tape. A host of benevolent local noncelebs gave up their holiday to serve 800 pounds of turkey, 800 pounds of mashed spuds (outdoing the much larger LA market by an impressive 100 pounds, I noted), 540 pounds of stuffing, 300 pounds of gravy (more than three times LA's paltry 80 gallons), 200 pies and 24 pounds of whipped cream.

December brought more big-time food numbers, at individual group gatherings and also numbers reported by folks who keep track of America's overall consumable numbers. A simple click of a computer key allowed me to Ask Jeeves, who told me 19,000 tons of turkey are consumed each Christmas.

Food in big numbers never seems to offend me when spread across a broader spectrum. What does is the Travel Channel's fascination with gluttony on shows like “Man v. Food” and its host Adam Richman, who is generally in some eatery surrounded by other cheering diners as he attempts to consume food measured in pounds, not ounces, before an hour elapses.

While channel surfing, I'll watch for a while but only with the same morbid curiosity that compels one to look at a passing bad car accident.

Five-pound omelets, burritos that look like football and slabs of ribs that look like railroad ties — this Richman fella just eats his way across the country.

The same channel also features shows like “Best Places to Pig Out.” If you've seen it, perhaps you made a vicarious visit to Denny's Beer Barrel Pub in Clearfield, Pa., the home of the world's biggest burgers. It's a place where the smallest burger on the menu is two pounds. At the top end is some compilation of flesh called the Beer Belly Buster, weighing 62 pounds, including five pounds of cheese and seven pounds of added toppings.

Or, perhaps you caught the episode that featured California's Big Man's and Papa's Pizzeria, which serves the largest deliverable pizza in the world, a 54-inch square comprised of 20 pounds of dough, 1 1/2 gallons of tomato sauce and 12 pounds of mozzarella cheese.

Whether it be the total numbers of a holiday feed or the Travel Channel's tip of the cap to gluttony, there is no doubt, in the Land of Plenty for many, many are plenty fascinated by those big-time food stats.