Overnight Briefing & General Reality Check

Super Eating:

People eat more food on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day of the year --except for Thanksgiving.  Of course, the only difference is on Thanksgiving, there's usually a better game on. Some other food facts --and urban legends:
   According to the American Institute of Food Distribution, we football fans eat 42 million pounds of snack foods and other junk food on Super Bowl Sunday. The breakdown:
   --11 million pounds of potato chips,
   --12.2 million pounds of avocados (see controversy below)
   --8.2 million pounds of tortilla chips, 
   --4.3 million pounds of pretzels,
   --3.8 million pounds of popcorn,
   --2.5 million pounds of mixed nuts
   --one 12-pound cheese wheel (kidding). Basically, it's more than double our average daily snack food consumption. We'll spend over $50 million buy all this stuff, too. Pass the checkbook and the Maalox.

More food facts:

   --Fans spend more than $50 million on food during the four days of Super Bowl weekend.
   --Sales of antacid increase 20 percent the day after Super Bowl Sunday. The really scary part: we're probably eating more food on Sunday than people in the Sudan do all year.
   --Domino's Pizza sells more pizzas on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day of the year: more than 1.2 million pies. Some other chains sell over 40 percent more pizzas than they do on a normal Sunday.
   --The National Chicken Council estimates Americans will eat 90 million pounds of chicken wings on Super Bowl weekend, which breaks down to 450 million individual wings.
   --Just the fans at the stadium will eat 5-thousand pounds of hot dogs, drink more than 24-thousand cans of soda and use 80-thousand pounds of ice.
   --By the way, a survey by Scarborough Sports Marketing found that 93 percent of Super Bowl watchers have been to a fast food restaurant in the past month. 80 percent have eaten at one three or more times in the past month. Super Bowl watchers are 18 percent more likely than all consumers to have eaten at a fast food restaurant 10 or more times in the last month. Ugh!

Which States Purchase Most 'Football Food'?:

--Utah, Louisiana: Lead the way in sales of breaded, unbreaded chicken wings
--Nebraska, South Dakota: Ahead of the pack when it comes to frozen pizza pies
--New Mexico, Virginia: Prevail in the potato chip category
   --Kentucky, Louisiana: The dynamo in dip sales
   --South Dakota, Indiana: The superstars of snack mixes
   --North Dakota. South Dakota: Cheer for the mixed nuts
   Source: Wal-Mart (Kaye)

Top-10 snack foods in the U-S, ranked by sales:

With the Super Bowl upon us, might as well stock up on munchies:
10. Party Mix
9. Ready-to-eat popcorn
8. Meat Snacks
7. Corn chips
6. Extruded snacks (I don't know what they are, but they sound nasty)
5. Microwavable popcorn
4. Pretzels
3. snack nuts
2. tortilla chips
1. potato chips