The best information I can get is that the average bowel movement is about 9 ounces (two sources) and that people, on average, go once a day. Of course, bowel movement size depends on what you and how much you eat. For our purposes, we’ll use 7 ounces as an average to accommodate the various sizes of people throughout the world. 

I have no idea where the idea for this post came from. I was reviewing news on the internet and looking at various political stories, so it must have been that that triggered my thoughts about POOP. J

So if the average bowel movement is 7 ounces and we figure the world population to be about 6 Billion people, that means 42 billion ounces of poop a day or 2.62 billion pounds. Times that by 365 days and we have 958 billion pounds of crap a year. That is about 159 pounds per person per year

According to Wikipedia:

The main pathogens that are commonly looked for in feces include:

• Salmonella and Shigella
• Yersinia tends to be incubated at 30 °C (86&nb ...

What could be better than a vegetable that is low in fat, high in vitamins and minerals and tastes great? Well how about a vegetable you can fry in high calorie oil and make them crunchy or you can add mayonnaise, cheese or sour cream taking you into cholesterol nirvana. The potato works in both cases.

I just found out that 2008 is the year of the potato, so I thought I would do some research to see how many potatoes the world consumes and which country is the biggest producer. So, here goes:

In 2007, the world produced 449 billion pounds of potatoes. China is the largest producer and consumer of potatoes. And you thought they only ate rice! Russia is second and India is third. The USA is down the line with about 38 billion pounds. That is a lot of French fries.

As you know, my quest is to make some sense out of the number of “things” we humans consume. Therefore, I must try to visualize what 449 Billion pounds of potato look like. At first, I thought I would use Mr. Potato Head. After all there is no better mascot them. According to Hasbro the maker of Mr. Potato Head “Mr. Potato Head, one of the world's most adored "personalities," was "born" in 1952, at the Pawtucket, RI-based toy company, “ And in fact, I did have a Mr. Potato Head when I was a kid. I decided that to use Mr. Potato Head because of my reverence for him.

So here goes. The heaviest person in the world was 1235 pounds and his name is Manuel Uribe. I say was because two years ago he went on a diet (probably gave up potatoes) and lost 600 pounds.  I thought he would make a great example. Therefore, at his heaviest it would take approximately 36 million Manuel Uribes to equal the world production of potatoes for just one year. Keep in mind that the population of Canada is approximately 36 million.

Because of its high starch content, the potato is an important human energy source. This same starch can be converted to ethanol alcohol, a gasoline substitute that can be used as an alternative fuel. The Germans used the potato as a fuel source during World War II. Farmers in Canada have used potato fuels to power their farm equipment. Watch out Manuel!