Hello all – I will try to make this an ongoing series of posts regarding statistics I come across that fry my little mind. Feel free to visit the first here.

I was reading BusinessWeek recently, and I came across an article about how Wal-Mart puts pressure on their suppliers to be more efficient, environmentally conscious, and save shelf space. So, General Mills decided to compress the pasta in their Hamburger Helper products, saving 20% in packaging. Snazzy, right? It is about time manufacturers do something about all that pointless and ultimately disappointing empty space in boxes of food. However, what’s amazing is the resources saved with this seemingly minor tweak to one product line (as summarized from several sources):

500 less trucks on the road!

660,000 tons of carbon dioxide gone!

890,000 pounds of paper saved!

$3.4billion in savings!

Holy cow – where to start? First off, who the hell still eats Hamburger Helper regularly any more? Even as a teenager, it was more trouble than it was worth. Boil the pasta, “sauce”, milk, and what’s the chance there is going to be ground beef in the house? Ramen noodle was much easier, cheaper, and not a whole lot less satisfying. Second, have you seen how much sodium is in there? I’m pretty sure salt itself does not contain as much sodium as Hamburger Helper. Most hover around 1000mg, while Cheeseburger Macaroni contains over 4000mg of sodium per serving. Egads.

So I assume you multiply the above numbers by five and those are the resources required to manufacturer the useless gruel. 2,500 trucks just to transport it? That’s unbelievable. We need to start seriously questioning whether the Hamburger Helpers (and some of this other highly manufactured products) are worth it. Please.