Last night, I took my kids out for an American children’s holiday known as Halloween.
Kids (and some ahem… adults) dress up in costume (I was a penguin this year), go door-to-door, saying “Trick or Treat” and get free candy from the neighbors.
My three kids brought back a record 420 pieces of candy. 
In today’s New York Times, I learned that in the weeks leading up to this holiday, Americans purchased $2.7 BILLION dollars in candy.
So here’s my challenge for you.
Assuming all of that candy is consumed by someone in America, estimate the total number of calories represented by $2.7 billion in candy.
Assuming 3,500 calories consumed results in a person gaining 1 lb (0.45 kg) in weight, estimate how many pounds (or kilograms) of weight the American population will gain. Add a comment below to post your entry.
The winner will receive public acknowledgement of their estimation skills, and I will send them a portion of the candy “tax” I collected from my kids.
Yes, we tax our kids for a portion of their candy collection, as mom and dad provide “infrastructure” and “chaperone” services.
It’s a useful lesson in taxation.
(We tax at a 33% tax rate.)
Mostly it is an excuse to reduce the amount of sugar they will otherwise end up consuming.
For my kids, it’s an excuse to get rid of the candy they don’t like anyways.
Good luck and Happy Halloween!
Entries will be accepted for next 72 hours, and only entries posted as comments below will be considered. A winner will be announced next week.
UPDATE as of Friday, November 4TH AT 12PM ET: New entries are welcome, but not eligible to win, as contest has closed.
329 thoughts on “A Sweet Estimation Question”
$2,700,000,000 spent on candy
Estimate of $5 spent/bag of candy
540,000,000 estimated bags of candy purchased
Each bag contains the same amount of candy/calories as 10 snickers bars (estimating based on price and size of bags).
Calories per snickers bar: 250.
Calories per bag = 2,500
Total Calories = 2,500 * 540,000,000 = 1.35 Trillion
Weight gained = 1.35 Trillion/3,500 = ~385 Million lbs
For this estimation, I’ll assume that the large majority of candy being purchased comes in bags of “fun size” candy bars. I will also assume that a bag of 100 pieces costs $10 and that each portion is 100 calories. Therefore:
$2.7 billion / $10 = 270,000,000 bags of candy
270,000,000 bags x 100 pieces = 27 billion pieces of candy
Assuming 25% goes to waste (because not everyone likes candy corn and various other candies that only seem to surface on Halloween), we’ll go with about 20 billion pieces. So…
2o billion pieces x 100 calories = 2 trillion calories
2 trillion calories / 3,500 cal/lb = 570,000,000 lbs (roughly)
Hello Victor,
Assuming a price around 10 cents per candy (mix of chocolate bars and smaller pieces) there would be 27 bn pieces of candy in circulation after Halloween, and with an average of 50 calories per piece it is 1350 bn calories ready to be swallowed.
Assuming no waste (not likely), the American population may gain 385 million lb (or an average of a little more than one pound per American).
Too bad there is no picture of your costume… 😉
Best regards,
Lisa
Assuming that people buy treats in packs and not individually, large stores will sell a box of 50 Hershey treats for about $10.
If 2,7 x 10^9 dollars are spent on treat, it represents 1,35 x 10^10 treats sold.
If average ‘fun size’ or ‘snack size’ treat calorie amount is 75 cal (from Twizzlers to Peanuts M&M)
This will represent approximately 1 x 10^12 calories consumed.
If 3500 calories result in gaining 1 lb, then 1 x 10^12 calories consumed will represent approximately 2,89 x 10^8 lbs
Or approximately 289 000 000 lbs. 🙂
One correction: In converting lb to kg I accidentally divided instead of multiplying. So the total in kg is 137M kg, and per person it’s 0.423kg.
Eran
Breaking the question down into how many calories per piece of candy and how much is each piece of candy.
Based on a list of 25 different candies, a piece of candy is about 75 calories.
A 1 lb bag of candy is about $3. With each bag containing about 18 pieces and each piece about 1.6 ounces then a piece of candy is ~12 cents.
With $2.7Bn sold on candy that is about 23.5 Bn pieces and at 75 calories each its about 1.755*10^12 and with 3500 calories equalling a pound of fat, that is 500 Million pounds of fat for the American population. With approximately 333M people in the USA, that is about 1.5 pounds per American citizen for Halloween. Yummy!
Assuming the average candy costs $1.15 and contains 3.5 ounces, the cost of 1 ounce is about $0.3285.
It means that $2.7B of candies (divided by the average cost of 1 ounce of candies) is about 8.217B oz.
Assuming there are 130 calories in 1 ounce of candy, we get 1068B calories consumed.
This, divided by 3500 gives us about 305M lb or 678M kg of total weight gained.
Sanity check:
Us population is about 325M. It means that on average each person gained 0.94 lb or 2kg. It seems reasonable, given the fact that it is consumed in one day (which is for itself radical).
Eran
2.7 bls * 600 cals/$= 1.62 trillion cals
1.62 tr. /3500 = 460 million pounds=208 million kgs
(700 grams per american)
Let’s assume for convenience’s sake that all the candy costs about the same per calorie as a Butterfinger fun-size candy bar, my favorite Halloween candy.
A bag of 16 Butterfinger fun size candy bars costs about $2.70 at Walmart. At 85 calories each, that’s 1,360 calories per bag.
$2.7 billion buys you a billion bags of Butterfinger fun-size bars. At 1,360 calories/bag, that’s 1,360,000,000 calories — or 1.36 trillion.
Assuming everyone who eats that candy is maintaining their weight exactly, and does not reduce their eating to compensate for the extra calories (and thus every calorie of candy will yield extra weight), that 1.36 trillion calories translates into about 389 million extra pounds, at 3,500 calories/pound gained.
TL;DR — $2.7 billion in candy translates to 389 million pounds gained (if all the candy is Butterfinger fun-size bars, which in any reasonable world all candy should be).
total 154 million of pounds, so 0.42lb per person