A Hitchhiker's Guide to Annenberg

Who says math can't solve real-world problems? Strolling through Annenberg for lunch on Nov. 20, I could not help noticing something puzzling about the Fish Filet On A Roll. No, it was not slithering off of the counter and attacking Dining Service personnel. Rather, the impudent filet challenged the oldest principles of mathematics by proclaiming that it obtained 102.1 percent of its calories from fat. In other words, there were more calories from fat than there were total calories in the food. Like some entertainment-industry "synergy" mergers, the part was greater than the sum of the wholes.

In this respect, the filet was not all that was fishy. Most calorie counters would have confidence that the Tater Tots would break the 100-percent mark (official records clocked them at 123.6), but some seemingly innocent foods also showed their unhealthy hidden natures: the Refried Beans had 105.1 percent calories from fat, the Vegetarian Chili (VGN) had 110.2 percent, and even the Tortilla Chips reached an artery-clogging 113.0 percent. Yet the grand prize for the day went to the Grilled Tex-Mex Vegetables (VGN), which at 203.4 percent set the new record for a ratio between zero and one.

Of course, there were some foods with lower calories-from-fat ratios available. The U.S. Department of Agriculture advises consumers to "choose a diet that provides no more than 30 percent of total calories from fat," and the health-conscious Annenbourgeois could easily fill his or her plate with Nacho Cheese Sauce (7.5 percent) or a large mound of Taco Meat that claimed to contain no fat at all.

Such a mathematical anomaly requires explanation, but as far as I know, few mathematicians have been bold enough to attack the "Annenberg Paradox." The first to make such an attempt might have been Douglas Adams, world-renowned mathematician and author of the Hitchhiker's Guide series of books. His approach involved the highly interesting but as yet unapplied discipline of "bistromathics," which explains the strange fluctuations in mathematics that frustrate all attempts to calculate a restaurant check. Could the Annenberg Paradox merely be a special case of this theory?

But if we assume that mathematics as we know it is still valid within Memorial Hall. We must look to alternate explanations for the phenomenon. Assistant Professor of Mathematics Mike J. Nakamaye, who teaches Math 25a: "Honors Advanced Calculus and Linear Algebra," has put forward one theory. "Measurements of fat content in Annenberg food undoubtedly rest on faulty linear approximation techniques," he said in an e-mail message. "To the extent that the food at Annenberg is everywhere homogeneous and nowhere differentiable, linear approximations are doomed to failure."

Unexplained physical phenomena could also be the culprits. Some say it takes more energy to chew and digest celery than one gets from eating it; what if one ingredient had negative caloric value? A celery stick topped with a mound of lard would have more calories from fat than it would total calories, and a ratio above 100 percent would be the natural result. Therefore, one should seek out foods with higher calories-from-fat ratios, since they are more likely to be made with these calorie-reducing ingredients.

Another possibility lies in the nature of the fat. Nutritionists refer to both simple carbohydrates and complex carbohydrates, so it seems logical that there could be both simple fats and complex fats, and the latter would take the form a + bi, where i is the square root of negative one. Clearly, the imaginary component would throw off the calculations, although the body could digest it merely by reading the diet book Think Yourself Thin.

If more fat spontaneously appeared within the body after the food were ingested, then the calories from the fat in the food would exceed the total calories in the food, and the percentage would be accurate. The same also would be true if if our bodies were able to metabolize fat with anti-fat, which upon encountering real fat annihilates it in a burst of high-energy gamma rays. This would enable the release of large amounts of energy from small amounts of fat--the 8.26 grams of fat in Grilled Tex-Mex Vegetables would, by Einstein's energy-mass equivalence, yield roughly 1.77 times 10(11) food calories, leading to an extremely distorted calories-from-fat ratio.

Of course, some rather mundane explanations might be offered. Dining Services could be employing the same accountant as the Undergraduate Council, in which case 40,000 pounds of pure fat will soon be "discovered" beneath the floor-boards of University Hall.

More likely, however, is the explanation of Executive Chef Michael Miller, who has stated that the software program used to calculate the nutritional information made printing errors and transposed numbers for three days until it was fixed. "We don't guarantee that all the information is absolutely correct--it would be just too dificult for us to do that for a myriad of reasons," Miller said. "This information is just a guide to help you make decisions about what you want to eat."

However, Miller also said that the errors had been accounted for and that the system was running smoothly by Nov. 17. Were the above 100 percent readings three days later just a fluke, or were they the output of a normally functioning system? What's truly going on? Perhaps inquiries should be forwarded to British mathematician Andrew Wiles, who gained celebrity for his complicated proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, to see if he can provide a solution. Of course, I myself have discovered a remarkable little explanation, but unfortunately this column is too short to contain it.

Stephen E. Sachs is a first-year in Grays Hall.