According to the World Gold Council 2712 tons of gold was consumed by the world in 2006. That is 867,840,000 ounces. Gold is currently selling for $1,000 an ounce. Ahhhhh, that is a lot of money. 

What does 2712 tons of gold look like? I have never seen even a couple pounds of gold so this should be interesting. Let’s see, a Boeing 747 ways about 200 tons empty. So, a fleet of about 14 747s would equal 2712 pounds of gold. Wow, gold is heavy and that doesn’t seem too startling to me. I wonder what else we can compare.

How about gold teeth? You know all that BLING! people are wearing in their month. I found out that approximately 1/10 ounce of gold is used to crown a single tooth. Now we’re talking! So, 2712 tons is 86,784,000 ounces so we times that by ten to get the number of teeth that can be crowned with the gold consumption of 2006. That is 867,840,000 teeth. Using this figure, on the average every man, women and child in the USA could get three teeth crowned with gold every year.

The problem is that with Gold selling for over $1,000 an ounce the crime rate would sky rocket. But, that’s another story.

Losing weight used to be all about keeping healthy and attractive, but now we may also have a financial benefit as we drop those pounds. Sheldon H. Jacobson, professor of computer science, At UIUC and his former graduate student Laura A. McLay, now a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, have found that weight gain of U.S. drivers has increased the nation's fuel consumption.

Their conclusions are based on mathematical computations drawn from publicly available data on U.S. weight gain from 1960 to 2002, a period in which the weight of the average American has increased by more than 24 pounds, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. By 2002, 62 percent of adults were overweight with a body mass index of between 25 and 30; more than 30 percent were considered obese with a BMI exceeding 30.

They determined that this extra weight accounts for 1 billion additional gallons of gasoline a year being used. Jacobson stated”

“Although the amount of fuel consumed as a result of the rising prevalence of obesity is small compared to the increase in the amount of fuel consumed stemming from other factors such as increased car reliance and an increase in the number of drivers, it still represents a large amount of fuel, and will become even more significant as the rate of obesity increases.”

According to the USDA American’s consumption of food has incre ...