From an article in the Wall Street Journal about the people the fast food industry depends on for the bulk of its profits came the following:

"Definitions of the heavy user vary, but by any measurement, Mr. Sheridan stands out. He spends as much as $40 a day at fast-food restaurants. He sometimes visits them more than 20 times a month -- a qualifying number for heavy-user status, according to a survey done by marketing firm Porter Novelli. A strict diet could cost the industry one of its best customers. Moreover, as an owner of Bill & Phil Moving & Storage, he wields influence over other heavy users. This autumn, the staff of Bill & Phil consisted of four heavy users. If Mr. Sheridan abstains, might the other three follow suit?"

What I want to know is if there are any OKers besides Dan and Dr. Mook who spend more than $40 a day on fast food and then actually manage to consume that amount of food? Even on high calorie burning OK training camps, you would have to be pretty much a human pirahna to do that, wouldn't you? Finally, if all tema members were spending $40 a day on fast food and eating it all up--yum!--could that same team still win the Relay Chumps, or would they have to settle for the prestigious Best Fed Team Prize?

-- Swampfox (wmikell@earthlink.net), January 12, 2000

Answers

I dispute the notion that I am a "heavy user" according to the definition stated in the WSJ. To examine this issue in more detail, I decided to account for all of my food intake yesterday and totaled my fast food bills. Yesterday was a typical day for me, so should serve as a good indicator of whether I am a heavy user or not... 7:45am - at McDonald's: 2 egg mcmuffins, 1 sausage mcmuffin, 1danish, large coffee with cream and sugar = $9.22 around 10am - consumed 1 Hoho I had left over from yesterday = $0.90 12:30 - lunch at Kentucky Fried Chicken, 1 12-piece assorted chicken parts in classic recipe, large Coke, 1 large carton of curly fries = $11.40 3pm - afternoon snack, 22 Oreo Double Stuff Cookies, 10-piece chicken McNuggets, 1 Coke, = $6.75 6pm - stopped by Circle-K, 2 packs Twinkies, 1 packet Red Licorice Twirls, 1 large Mellow-Yello to go = $5.05 7pm - TV Dinner, 3 cans coke, 2 bowls ice cream, 1 snickers bar = $3.50 (TV dinner not incl. since it's real nutritious) Total is about $37, not enough to qualify as heavy. In fact, I think my average daily fast food expenses are less than this!

-- Mook (everett@psi.edu), January 14, 2000.

After running down Mook's list with Rawl Erskines, an associate from the marketing firm Porter-Novelli, I have to concede that Mook doesn't qualify as a heavy user, strictly speaking. However, he does fit squarely into the "heavy-lite" user category, and Mr. Erskines said that the fast food industry would find even Mook to be "a wonderful customer, just the kind of profit center they have to have to meet industry ROE expectations".

I must ask the question: how good can it be for OK's future relay chances if one of the lynchpins of the team is in grave danger of becoming a human blob? The fact that Mook knows all the lingo (curly fries in cartons at KFC? how many contestants on "21" would have answered that correctly?) must be taken as a dire portent of things to come.

-- Swampfox (wmikell@earthlink.net), January 14, 2000.

For dinner on Saturday night at the Georgia A-meet, we went to an all- you-can-eat Chinese buffet. I have to say I managed to eat light. But, I lost count of how many trips Dan made to the buffet.

-- Spike (mike_eglinski@kcmo.org), January 16, 2000.