©Channel 4 |
A little girl is fascinated by a lifetime of apples and carrots |
The average person will eat over 10,000 bars of chocolate, shed 121 pints of tears and have sex more than 4,200 times, a television documentary will claim tomorrow.
Human Footprint, to be shown on Channel 4, aims to chart every aspect of our lives to give an insight into how much we eat, dream and pass wind from the cradle to the grave. It also looks at the effect each human being has on the planet during the 2,475,576,000 seconds that each of us will, on average, have on Earth.
The array of statistics, which includes how much the average person will eat, spend, love, shop, travel and waste, was the brainchild of Nick Watts, the programme's producer, who came up with the idea three years ago while having a pint of beer in a pub.
He said: "I was thinking to myself how full a swimming pool would become if I tipped into it all the beer I drank in a lifetime."
Mr Watts and his team spent the next two years compiling hundreds of statistics and then came up with ways of visualising them, including a Hansel and Gretel house built with 10,000 bars of chocolate and more than 15,000 pints of "milk" (water and powder paint) left on a doorstep.
He said: "It's about wondering what it would look like if all the clothes, washing machines and toilet paper you ever used were piled up outside your front door. Or if you were to lay out all the bread you will ever eat or cups of tea you will drink."
He said the statistic that surprised him the most was that each person smokes, on average, 77,000 cigarettes.
The show takes viewers on a journey from babyhood, when we get through 3,796 nappies and produce 254 litres of urine, through to old age and death, by which time we will have eaten 10,866 carrots, taken 7,163 baths and passed wind an average of 15 times a day.
Apparently we will know 10 people who committed suicide, nine who died in road accidents and one in a fire.
Mr Watts spent from midnight to dawn this morning laying out 74,802 cups of tea in Trafalgar Square (the amount we will drink in a lifetime) to promote his programme.
He said he was keen for people to enjoy the show rather than think it has a hidden message, adding: "It was never meant to be an eco, tub-thumping piece of work; it was there to entertain and if it made you think a little along the way about the life you are living, then so much the better."
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