Fun With Internet Research: Putting Cheese In Perspective

In 2007, cheese production in the United States rose 1.6%. The leading cheese producing state was, of course, Wisconsin, which was responsible for 25.3% of the 9.7 billion pounds of cheese produced in the U.S.

That cheese, rolled into one ounce slices, would form the heart of a grilled cheese sandwich 24.8 miles on a side -- 615.8 square miles in total. The loaf of bread from which that sandwich would have to be cut would be 75 miles long. The flour used to make that loaf of bread represents an above-average harvest on more than 40 million acres of land, more than twice the entire wheat output of Canada in 1921. Serving that grilled cheese sandwich with an appropriately sized side dish would require a bowl of tomato soup the size of Wayne County, Michigan, which has a population of just over 2 million people, each of whom could invite 16 friends over for grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. There would still be enough left over the citizens of Wayne County to have leftover soup and sandwiches for lunch the next day, assuming no one made a pig of himself.

The United States also imported 206,000 tons of cheese in 2007, enough to make a plate of nachos the size of Manhattan Island. Nachos on that scale would require a lot of sliced jalapeno peppers, and if you were to grow a single pepper big enough to provide all the slices necessary for Manhattan-sized nachos (and assuming it was a pepper of standard girth), that pepper would have to be long enough to stretch from the International Space Station to the surface of the Earth.

Comments

[Squidley]

(channelling fish)

I like cheese!