Can you believe what happened Sunday? Did we really just…

There are myriad emotions going through me right now. Shock. Amusement. Denial. At the very least I’m impressed. Yes, America. We ate 1.25 billion chicken wings on Sunday, according to (and I’m not kidding), the Wing Report, published by the National Chicken Council.

The social commentary is interesting, concerning what has just past during the Super Bowl. Food and events are always linked , with an attitude that says, “Yes, its game day. We are having people over to watch another group of people run around, and yes, there will be dip – but why?”

It’s true, I ask the hard questions. I mean, who really cares about why Wilson decided to make that last play or how Greece is going to dig itself out of debt and not throw the whole Eurozone (and the World economy) into chaos?

Going back to the Seachickens and their most unfortunate land counterparts, regular chickens, the figure of 625 million birds being slaughtered for one day of eating is mind-boggling. That equates to four wings per person throughout the United States, although I know some of us definitely eat more than just four wings every Wednesday at the bars.

Now, if you say to yourself “Pirom’s completely wrong, because I didn’t have wings at home during the game,” the statistics say they’re mainly consumed in sport bars and restaurants. Cheaper than ribs and much better than pizza that’s been sitting around for too long, the trusty wing also has that added feature of convenience. Frying at home is a pain unless a critical mass is present, but it is so gloriously satisfying with the added bonus of the licking of fingers.

Ironically, the Wing Report found Washington and New England are some of the lowest wing consumers in the country. Come on guys. Pull your weight.

Hedonism and gluttony are p what occurred this weekend. Granted, a number of more ambitious folks out there did so with eloquent, piped football frosting on cupcakes and planning football-related, color-coordinated foods.

For the rest of us, bigger is often better. Case in point, the structural engineers who created edible stadiums composed of sandwiches and tortilla chip-like material with dips as turf deserve a standing ovation. The remaining peasants and low-hanging fruit folk sufficed with a simple party platter and perhaps also some hamburger and hot dog nonsense.

Dip, however, always seems omnipresent, and it seems this is its prime time. Why doesn’t anyone ever eat a dip outside of a party setting? Remember, I ask the hard-hitting questions.

With a mystical place in the food pantheon, not quite sauce nor true spread, dips almost seem like the love child of flavor profiles in which there are no rules and an appeal to the muddled palate of a stoner.

Think about it. Who in their sober mind puts together seven layers of dips and calls it good? There is a fascinating American ingenuity to it, in which the ease of contacting chip to dip was married with the love of pseudo-Mexican food. The veritable serving trough also probably saved on the washing-up. 

According to food historians, the idea of dips only became fashionable after World War II. The first to be commercialized and made most popular was by the Lipton Company and their “French Onion,” in which dehydrated onion soup was mixed in with sour cream. 

Describing this flavor to the uninitiated will seem strange analytically: creamy (obviously), with a fattiness punctuated by a sort of cooked-onion-but-not-quite-cooked-onion profile. And come on, adding dehydrated soup to flavor sour cream? No way was that concocted sober.

Interestingly, the official dips sponsor of the NFL, Sabra, was not present during ad time. First off, it seems ridiculous that there’s an official dips sponsor in the first place, but who would have thought hummus would be in the mainstream, which about 10 years ago was considered an exotic ethnic food?

Seahawks or Patriots, Gryffindor or Slytherin, it seems to matter not who you root for as ultimately we can all collectively be united as a people who decide that this specific day demands foods be eaten with little coherence. And in impressively almost grotesque quantities  – seriously, 1.25 billion wings?