A few days ago my grandson was having some watermelon, and with the hyperbole of a five-year-old said “I think a hundred million people are eating watermelon right now.” My wife replied “Grandpa can probably figure out if that’s true”. Challenge accepted.
World watermelon production is 105 million metric tons a year. That works out to about 231 billion pounds. Divide by the world population of 8.314 billion people, you get 27.8 pounds per person per year. If that seems like a lot (the average in the US is half that), note that in China watermelon is massively popular: they average eating about 108 pounds a year per person.
That weight includes the rind. I did a quick test by carving a generous wedge of watermelon. It weighed about a pound; half of that was the rind. After removing the rind, I was left with a dinner plate full of watermelon chunks. I ate it at a reasonable pace; it took about five minutes.
27.8 pounds of watermelon times 5 minutes per pound means that the average human spends 139 minutes a year eating watermelon. A year consists of 525,960 minutes.1365.25 days times 24 hours times 60 minutes So on average we spend 139/525,960 of our time eating watermelon, which is 0.02643%.
Another way of wording that is, on average, at any given moment 0.02643% of the world’s population is eating the fruit. 8.314 billion people times 0.0002643 is about 2.2 million. So it’s reasonable to estimate that two million people are chowing down on watermelon at any particular time.
(Yes, I know, there will be variations based on the time of year, and the time day. Certainly in the US, more is consumed in daylight hours and summer. I’m not saying it’s always 2.2 million for every instant – there will be spikes and troughs. But it’s a big world, with different time zones and climate zones and culinary styles spread across the globe. Those factors will tend to smooth out the consumption pattern.)
Sure, Westley was exaggerating. But if he had just said “millions”, he would have been spot on.
