It’s not so great being average
Lori Borgman | Monday, Dec 27, 2010
It all started with a television show on how soda is made. The
program concluded saying the average American drinks 50 gallons of soda a year.
I tried to visualize myself lining up 95 2-liters in the garage or pouring it
all in a 50-gallon drum and just getting a straw.
And then I began to wonder: Who is this average American?
I did my own research on the research on the average American and if
the numbers are to be believed, the average American is a mess.
According to David Zinczenko, author of "Eat This, Not That!,"
the average American consumes 24 pounds of candy a year. Multiple reports claim
that the average American eats 22 teaspoons of sugar a day, or 44 pounds a year.
The Palm Beach Post reported that the average American eats 1.13 cups
of vegetables and 0.68 cups of fruit a day. I read that and was stunned – how
does one measure 0.68 cups of fruit or 1.13 cups of vegetables? Were the
strawberries whole or smashed down in the measuring cup? Were the carrots sliced
or shredded?
The average American eats more than 4 pounds of pasta, 13.8 pounds of
turkey and 5.2 pounds of sweet potatoes per year. He eats only 8 pounds of
berries a year, but 17.9 pounds of bacon, 120 pounds of potatoes, 21 dozen eggs,
200 sandwiches and grabs fast food more than four times a week. The average
American is also likely to be overweight. Shocker.
What we don’t eat we throw away. Last year the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services announced that 25 percent of the food Americans buy
goes to waste. This year the figure was 40 percent.
The average American isn’t sleeping so well either.
In 1960, the average Joe got eight hours of sleep a night. Today, the
National Sleep Foundation reports that most people get by on less than seven
hours while USA Today reports that the average American is down to about six
hours of sleep a night.
The average American works a 46-hour week. A Microsoft study found
that average Americans waste 16work hours a week, most often
attending worthless meetings or surfing the internet
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average American spends more
than 100 hours commuting to the job (where he works some and dallies some). A
Gallup poll says the average American’s daily commute is 46 minutes round trip.
The average American is probably eating while he drives.
The average American has about 20 hours of leisure time per week. The
IRS estimates filling out a complete 1040 form with Schedules A through E will
take 44hours.Say so long to two weeks of leisure time, average American.
Meanwhile the average American teen is busy sending 3,000 text
messages a month or about 100 a day. It’s a wonder the average American teen has
time for school.
When the average American isn’t throwing food out of the
refrigerator, guzzling soda, unwrapping candy bars, working, sleeping, parked in
front of the computer or yelling at his kid to quit texting, he is watching
television. Nielsen Company says the average American watches 35 hours and 34
minutes of television a week. For adults over age 65 those average American
numbers go up to 48 hours and 54 minutes per week, which is almost three hours
more than the average American’s work week.
With the New Year approaching a worth while goal might be to be a
little less average.
