3/85Percentage of the annual U.S. potato crop that is french fried: 22
3/86Percentage of Americans between ages 6 and 17 who cannot pass a basic fitness test: 64
6/88Percentage of students at Dunkin’ Donuts University who do not pass the six-week training course: 5
6/88Percentage of dogs that are overweight: 40
9/89Percentage of fast-food restaurant employees who say they have stolen food or money from their employer: 62
9/89Estimated amount of grease New Orleans restaurants disposed of last year, in gallons: 2,000,000
12/90Rank of TV viewing, eating, and shopping, among activities Americans spend the most leisure time engaged in: 1,2,3
5/91Percentage of fast-food restaurant workers who admit to doing “slow, sloppy work on purpose”: 22
5/92Percentage by which the likelihood of a child becoming obese increases for every hour of TV watched per day: 2
11/93Number of hamburgers called for in White Castle’s recipe for turkey-stuffing: 10
12/93Average number of pounds lost by a member of the Biosphere 2 team during the first two years of the project: 29
12/93Average amount of fat consumed by an American each year, in pounds: 59
4/93Ratio of the number of women who deal with depression by eating to the number of men who do: 3:1
Ratio of the number of men who deal with depression by drinking or taking drugs to the number of women who do: 5:1
6/94Membership of the Arcigola Slow Food Movement, a group founded in Italy to protest the proliferation of fast food: 50,000
9/94Price of a 4 1/2-pound-steak dinner at Amarillo’s Big Texan Steak Ranch, if consumed within an hour: $0
2/95Average amount of fat consumed by an American adult each week, expressed in sticks of butter: 6
5/95Year in which, at the current rate of increase, all Americans will be overweight: 2059
6/96Number of pounds John Candy’s Canadian Bacon body double has lost in the two years since Candy’s death: 243
12/97Number of Krispy Kreme Doughnut “artifacts” on display at the Smithsonian: 48
4/98Number of complimentary doughnuts Bob Dole receives each week as part of his Dunkin’ Donuts contract: 60
Number he distributed to reporters waiting outside Monica Lewinsky’s Watergate apartment last February 2: 48
5/98Factor by which having an overweight parent increases a child’s chances of becoming obese: 2
11/00Amount the Centers for Disease Control has spent redecorating a stairwell to encourage obese employees to walk: $14,900
Percentage change since then in the sales of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts: +110
1/02Number of Pop-Tarts dropped on Afghanistan as part of U.S. airborne food aid in the first month of bombing: 2,400,000
11/02Rank of the United States and Britain among nations whose residents are most likely to be obese: 1,2
6/03Average quality-of-life rating researchers assign U.S. children with cancer, on a scale of 1 to 100: 69
8/03Number of candy-bar wrappers that Cadbury’s new anti-obesity campaign offers to exchange for a basketball: 90
Minimum hours of basketball required for an 85-pound child to burn off the calories from that many candy bars: 100
11/04Weight in pounds of a “millionaire” seeking “Cinderella” in a New York magazine personal ad last summer: 444
2/04Number of times a Hummer H2 could be driven around the world on the excess calories Americans consume each year: 244
2/04Percentage by which health-care spending by an obese American exceeds that by an American of normal weight: 36
Percentage by which health-care spending by a daily smoker exceeds that by a nonsmoker: 21
8/05Estimated total number of tons by which American adults are overweight: 1,180,000
9/05Average amount an Ohio man paid children to berate him for being obese, until he was arrested in April: $30
10/06Amount the Alaska Zoo paid last year to build a treadmill for its 8,000-pound elephant: $150,000
12/06Ratio of the number of people worldwide who are overweight to the number who are undernourished: 5:3
12/06Chances that a patient who undergoes weight-loss surgery will develop complications within six months: 2 in 5
4/06Percentage of U.S. adults in 1985 who said they found overweight people less attractive than others: 55
Percentage who said this last year: 24
7/06Average number of extra calories children consume for every hour of television they watch: 167
1/07Estimated number of gallons of extra gasoline burned each year because Americans are overweight: 938,000,000
6/07Number of the sixteen states of the South where more than 25 percent of adults are clinically obese: 12
Number of all other states where this is true: 5
9/07Chances that a U.S. firefighter is overweight: 9 in 10
4/08Chances that a U.S. public school accepts advertising from corporations that sell junk food: 2 in 3
Chances that these schools wind up receiving no income from the advertisements: 3 in 4
2/09Percentage of U.S. school districts that have banned bake sales due to anti-obesity regulations: 29