Americans Eat 50-Billion Burgers A Year, That’s About 3 Hamburgers A Week

At the base level, a burger is a piece of meat and a bun with something on it. It’s simple but it seems to make a lot of people happy.  –  Danny Meyer

Burgers are indeed the source of true happiness, a fact supported by the rich cheesy topping, crisp flavorful onion, and splash of tomato that brings it all together with a pickle tang finish.

Or maybe you’re a bolder sort, enjoying their burger topped with onion rings and barbecue sauce in a true Western-style and a splash of blue cheese. Whatever the case, it’s hard to argue that the burger isn’t the perfect food, and Burger Day is here to celebrate it in all its glory.

• The hamburger made its official debut at the 1904 St. Louis food festival, but it didn’t really take off properly until mass commercialization of the concept in the following decades.
• Some believe the burger was invented in Hamburg, Germany, or to be more precise, the meat that would become the hamburger was.
• Other people assert that the hamburger originated with Louis Lassen, a Danish immigrant who cooked up the first patty in 1900 in New Haven, using ideas he’d picked up in Europe.
• The Library of Congress credits Louis Lassen, a Danish immigrant, owner of Louis’ Lunch in New Haven, Connecticut as the creator of the hamburger as we know it.
• During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the need for cheap food reached even greater heights. Seeing hunger and poverty, entrepreneurs looked for ways to get tasty food into people’s bellies without the usual price tag. So they began developing machines that would churn out burgers en masse.
• The oldest fast food restaurant in the world is the White Castle franchise, which opened in 1921.
• The people of America eat more burgers out at restaurants or on the go than they do at home.
• However, the hamburger in its current form, with ground beef and a bun, is a decidedly American creation.
• We have Genghis Khan and his conquering hordes of horsemen to thank for the simple hamburger. While his troops were riding to battle, they would keep scraps of lamb or mutton, formed into patties, under their saddles to tenderize the meat. When they stopped to make camp, the horsemen would cook the patties over open flames or eat them raw. The dish was taken to Russia, where it became “steak tartare.”
• Americans alone consume approximately 50-billion burgers a year.
• The average American consumes about 30 pounds of hamburgers a year.
• On average, Americans eat 3 hamburgers a week.
• More than seven of every ten burgers (73% or 9.6 billion) consumed in the U.S. were prepared and purchased out of the home.
• The Hamburger Hall of Fame is located in Seymour, Wis.
• If all Hamburgers eaten by Americans in a year are arranged in a straight line, it would circle our Earth 32 times or more!
• Hamburger (ground beef patty) is the most popular food for the grill, followed by steak and chicken.
• During WWI, the US Gov’t tried to rename hamburgers as ‘liberty sandwiches.’
• In 1921, Walter A Anderson (a short order cook) and E.W. Ingram (an insurance exec) founded White Castle, the oldest burger chain, in Wichita, Kansas. Their first burger sold for a nickel.
• The Big Mac was introduced in 1968 and sold for 49 cents
• McDonalds sells 75 hamburgers every second.
• One in eight Americans has been employed by McDonald’s.
• McDonalds is the largest distributor of toys in the world.
• A slider is a very small square hamburger patty sprinkled with diced onions and served on an equally small bun. According to the earliest citations, the name originated aboard U.S. Navy ships, due of the way greasy burgers slid across the galley grill while the ship pitched and rolled.
• Due to widely anti-German sentiment in the U.S. during World War I, an alternative name for hamburgers was Salisbury steak. Following the war, hamburgers became unpopular until the White Castle restaurant chain marketed and sold large numbers of small 2.5-inch square hamburgers, known as sliders.
• According to the Oxford English Dictionary, hamburger was first abbreviated to burger in 1939.
• Nearly 60-percent of all sandwiches sold worldwide are actually hamburgers.

Sources:

Days of the Year

Foodimentary

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Beef2Live

Just Fun Facts