How many people will 8000 lbs of nonperishables feed?

Question

I lead a middle school small group and the ministry just collected nearly 8000 lbs of nonperishables ( canned goods mainly ) is there any way to figure out how many people this will feed (some sort of calculated estimate)? I would love to say, "because of our work we helped feed over X amount of people."

thanks!

Answer 1

IF THE CANS WERE ALL 14.5 OZ + YOU ASSUME 2 CANS PER PERSON , =4414 APPROX . BUT DOES 2 CANS REALLY DO IT ? ,NOT ALL WILL BE 14.5 OZ., YOU MAY ASSUME W/ DAMAGE ,ETC WASTE + THE ACTUAL WEIGHT OF THE CANS REMOVED MAYBE 2500 PEOPLE.

Answer 2

It would depend over what amount of time. You need to fill in the missing variable. Also what kind of food was it, 8000 pounds of rice vs. 8000 pounds of canned food is different.
Why not say something like you contributed enough food to feed a small village for several months.

Answer 3

Depends upon the food... does the 8000 pounds of food include the weight of the cans?

Also, are you talking about feeding X number of people one meal or meals for a day, a week, a month?

As a quick number, you can assume each person gets a 1.5 pounds for a meal - beans, meat, bread, weight of cans then you have over 5,300 meals.

Answer 4

I've read some statistics that indicates that 450 lbs of grain provide the caloric equivalent to feed a person for a year. The non perishable foods that you have will probably have on average a higher caloric content than just grain. I imagine you have grains (in the form of pasta), beans, canned meats.....etc. So, your collected food will be more nutritious than grain.

Using the grain calculation, a person would consume 1.23 pounds of food per day. So your collected food would feed AT LEAST 6500 people for 1 day (or 1 person for 6500 days).

-----------let me edit my response......it is not correct (can't trust everything you read....lol)------------

This website indicates closer to 2200 lbs per person per year. (and when I think about it, it makes sense).
So, using those stats, you can feed slightly less than 4 people for a year.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3284/is_n2_v13/ai_9152945

(sorry about my original comments being incorrect)

Answer 5

One. Drop it off at Rosie O'Donnell's house.