WHAT A MAN EATS IN A LIFETIME.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6126, 12 March 1898, Page 1

WHAT A MAN EATS IN A LIFETIME.

An article by Mr P. W. Everett, Fellow of the Eoyal Statistical Society, in which is calculated the enormous amount of food and drink consumed by a healthy man in a seventy years' life, is certainly one of the most prominent features of the Double Christmas Number of Pearson's Magazine. The most remarkable results at which he arrives are rendered even more striking by the assistance of some exceedingly clever photographic designs. We quote a few interesting conclusions : — "Ip one day a healthy man will eat on an average l£lb of bread in the form of the white or brown loaf, biscuits, pastry, scones, and the like, all of which, of course, have for their essential element, baked flour. " For the first ten years of life and the last ten, we will assume that only half this quantity is eaten. So altogether, ' our typical man consumes, od an average, I.lb of bread eacb day for sixty years. This works out at between fourteen and fifteen tons of bread in a lifetime ! If we imagine tho whole quantity to be baked in one huge loaf, we should require a decent-sized drawing-room, containing 1200 cubic feet, to hold it. " Meat is an important item. The man who regularly partakes of his two rashers of bacon for breakfast, and his chop for lunch, and half a pound of steak for dinner, being required to order his life's supply of meat at birth, could put it in this wav : — " Slices of bacon to measure four miles placed end to end. "Chops to reach from Westminster Abbey to St Paul's. "All the beef on twenty full - sized bullocks. " Before dismissing the statistics of the food consumption for those of the drink consumption, let us take stock up to this point. Allowing our man 1-Jlb of bread each dav, lib of flesh foods, _lb of fish, 21b ofvegetables and fruit, and _lb of sundries, we have a total of silb of solid foods daily or nearly a ton a year! Taking this average to extend over sixty years, the exact weisrht of solid food consumed in a lifetime is" very approximately 53£ tons. " The liquid refreshment of the inner man will provide some statistics of a hardly less startling nature. "Half a pint of tea or coffee in the morning, half a pint of water, beer, or other beverage at the mid-day meal, and perhaps a pint in the evening, with another pint of milk, tea, or sodawater disposed of at various periods during the day, gives three pints of liquid daily, a fair average consumption, taking winter and summer together. "Now three pints a day develop into 1095 pints a year, and for a lifetime of seventy years, 76,650 pints, or, roughly, 76,700 pints, allowing for the extra days iv the leap years. "The weight of this 76,700 pints of liquid amounts to 42$ tons. " Altogether, then, the healthy man, with a good appetite and average drinking capacity, assimilates into his system during seventy years, 96£- tons of material, solid and liquid, or, putting it in another way, and assuming his weight to be twelve stove, he consumes over 1280 times his own weight of nourishment in the course of a lifetime." W. Strange and Co.'s registered brand "Excelsior" clothing for boys, youths and men — is cheapest and best. Anexperienced miner has asserted that theve is a fair supply of gold within three feet of the surface on a small estate in Kirkcudbright, Scotland. * . . y : . ;,.- ■■ - , . I