Bread and cocktails

A cocktail has as many calories as half a loaf of bread.

This is the kind of statistic The Meejah love.

How many calories are there in half a loaf of bread?
What sized loaf?
What kind of bread?
What sort of cocktail?

I am left bemused by this kind of statistic, which is almost but not quite totally devoid of meaning.

It is what I would call a 'factoid': a fact that is at the same time surprising, seemingly dodgy, but probably - within its own logical scope - true in a sense.

Actually it isn't a real factoid - a factoid is epitomised by my son James's factoids, which are totally true, quantitative, specific facts that are, however, surprising either in being contrary to what one expects or (better, for a good factoid..) just the sort of fact you never thought you would ever need to know or wish to know. James is, and always has been, good at factoids: a photographic memory combined with attention to what most of us ignore equips him to store factoids, and is probably a reason why he is so good at what he does - which is all to do with information, factoidal or not. A proper factoid is true, clear, and quantitative: whereas the cocktail being equivalent to half a loaf of bread leans towards the dodgy.

Google, as is so often the case, doesn't help too much. There seem to be 66 calories in a slice of white bread. And there are 18 slices in a medium loaf: so 1,188 calories in a loaf of white bread. That is quite close to the 1,288 calories that are in a full loaf of Warburtons bread, so we can accept it for now.

That is a lot of calories.

So half a loaf of bread contains about 644 calories: call it 600 (physicists, of which I am one, can get away with approximation..).

So, the cocktail.

A Cosmo contains 100 calories - not quite the 644 in half a loaf of bread.

A Moscow Mule has 182 calories - again,. not even close to half a loaf of Warburtons white bread.

Clearly the cocktail with which we are being invited to compare half a loaf of bread is neither a Cosmo nor a Moscow Mule.

But I, being well traveled, have drunk a Long Island. I well remember, when I was Marketing Director of a California company in Digital Filter Design, buying cocktails for me and other staff on my expense account, including my Long Island: and the company co-owner, in tones of astonished almost-admiration, saying to me "you DRANK a LONG ISLAND??!" as if that were a feat of amazing achievement.

(I admit, in my naivete, I was not quite aware that a Long Island Iced Tea was not quite the same as a Liptons Iced Tea).

So, perhaps the half loaf of white bread is equivalent to a Long Island?

Well, as it turns out, a Long Island Iced Tea contains vodkatequilalight rumtriple secgin - and a splash of cola to boot. And that - with the splash of cola - makes 768 calories: easily beating the half loaf of white bread.

So, we may infer that The Meejah is referring to a Long Island Iced Tea or equivalent rather than a Cosmo or a Moscow Mule when they compare the calories to those of a half load of bread.

However, the 768 calories in the Long Island Iced Tea might be challenged. For instance, a Long Island Iced Tea from Applebees (not, I admit, the first choice for a Long Island Iced Tea) has not 768 but 117 calories: thus coming in far below the half loaf of bread.

We need to look more closely.

A shot of alcohol contains about 100 calories. So if the Long Island Iced Tea actually contains a full shot of each of its six alcoholic ingredients, then the alcohol alone will deliver a massive jolt not only of 600 calories but also a probably terminal dose of alcohol toxin even before the bill arrives to finish things off with a coronary. (The splash of cola adds the final 168 calories).

That would be a nice Long Island....

But if the Applebees Long Island delivers a measly 117 calories (a single shot..), then probably any actual commercial Long Island at any price payable by any ordinary person would not contain six times as many shots?

And indeed we find that a real Long Island Iced Tea contains three or four shots. Presumably the vodkatequilalight rumtriple sec, gin are half shots?

But no: we can measure not by shots but by Standard Drinks - and a Standard Drink contains not one shot but one and a quarter shots. And a Standard Long Island Iced Tea contains four Standard Drinks: thus five shots. Which is a lot, though even so not quite enough to match half a loaf of bread.

So, for The Meejah's Cocktail we have to look further.

Far enough, in fact, to find the Adios Motherfucker.

Yes, there really is a cocktail with that name.

And it contains, by reputation, five Standard Drinks. Which is about 6 and a quarter shots - just about enough to match a half loaf of bread.

So I would suggest, in the interests of transparency in statistics, that The Meejah, rather than claiming boldly that 'a cocktail has as many calories as half a loaf of bread', might have been better advised to clarify that 'an Adios Motherfucker has as many calories as half a loaf of bread'. Which, given the 'Adios Motherfucker' name, might not be all that surprising.

And even so, I might be tempted to think that the Adios Motherfucker might taste better than eating half a loaf of bread.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Early Years

Timing error in sampling, and balanced ADC/clock choice

How to confuse people