Super Bowl Weekend Favorite Food: Chicken Wings

Food for thought: Americans will eat 1.35 Billion chicken wings on Super Bowl Weekend 2018, enough to circle the Earth three times, and the favorite dipping sauce is ranch dressing.

That’s according to The National Chicken Council annual Chicken Wing Report, and includes wings eaten in restaurants and at home.

That figure is up 1.5%, or 20 million wings, from 2017.

In case you haven’t heard, this year, the Philadelphia Eagles and New England Patriots battle for the Lombardi Trophy on Super Bowl Sunday.

To visualize how many wings that is:9

If 1.35 Billion wings were laid end to end along Interstate 95, they would stretch from Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia to Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Mass. almost 250 times.
1.35 Billion wings is enough to put 625 wings on every seat in all 32 NFL stadiums.
1.35 Billion wings is enough to circle the Earth three times.
That’s 394 million feet of chicken wings – enough that a chicken could cross the road 13 million times.
Americans will eat 20 million more wings this year. If wings were dollars, that would only buy us two minutes of commercials during the big game. If you can’t do the math – a 60 second commercial during the Super Bowl costs $10 million bucks.

Fans choose sides

More than half (59%) of U.S. adults who eat chicken wings say they typically like to eat their wings with ranch dressing, according to a new National Chicken Council poll conducted online in January 2017 by Harris Poll. The survey asked which dipping sauces or snacks chicken wing eaters typically like to eat with their wings. They could choose more than one option.

This survey was conducted online within the United States among 2,086 U.S. adults ages 18 and older, among whom 1,381 eat chicken wings.

ecoXplorer has been told this online survey is “not based on a probability sample and therefore no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be calculated”.

Ranch is once again the #1 side or sauce typically eaten with wings and its popularity has been growing steadily, up from 51% in 2014 and 56% in 2015. Only one-third (33%) like to eat their wings with blue cheese dressing.

The full rankings are: #1 Ranch (59%), #2 (tie) Buffalo/Hot Sauce (48%), #2 (tie) BBQ Sauce (48%), #4 Honey Mustard (35%), #5 Blue Cheese (33%), #6 Teriyaki Sauce (23%), #7 Sriracha (15%) and Nothing/”I eat them naked” (8%).

Wing eaters flock to bone-in wings

Wing eaters if they prefer to eat traditional, bone-in wings or boneless wings, and bone-in wings are widening the gap against their boneless cousin.

According to the survey, 60% of wing eaters prefer traditional, bone-in wings while 40% chose boneless. In 2015, the spread was 54% vs. 46%, respectively. Boneless wings are typically white, boneless chicken breasts cut into strips, breaded or floured and tossed with Buffalo sauce.

This data parallels with recent research by The NPD Group, which found that 64 percent of chicken wings served in restaurants are bone-in.

Servings for the bone-in wings rose by 6 percent in 2017, while boneless wings declined at a similar rate.

More information

For the full report and more information on wings, including their history, where Americans get their wings, wing recipes and wing prices, visit the National Chicken Council website.

Or, just take a peck at this infographic.

The National Chicken Council is the non-profit, trade association headquartered in Washington, D.C. that represents chicken producer-processors, the companies that produce and process chickens raised for meat. Member companies of the council account for more than 95 percent of the chicken sold in the United States.

Aren’t you glad you asked.

ecoXplorer Evelyn Kanter is a journalist with 25+ years of experience as a newspaper and magazine writer, radio & TV news producer & reporter, and author of guidebooks and smartphone apps – all focusing on travel, automotive, the environment and your rights as a consumer.

ecoXplorer Evelyn Kanter currently serves as President of the International Motor Press Assn. (IMPA), a former Board Member of the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW) and a current member of the North American Travel Journalists Assn. (NATJA) and the North American Snowsports Journalists Assn. (NASJA).

Contact me at evelyn@ecoxplorer.com.