On the travels of a corn chip

Today I ate lunch at Qdoba’s Mexican Grill. I ordered Chicken Mexican Gumbo. As I sat down and began to eat, it occurred to me that a great number of people must have been involved in the provision of this meal. I stared at a corn chip, which happened to be floating cheerfully atop my Mexican gumbo, and began to renumerate the steps that had to be taken before I could eat it.

First, you have to grow the corn. Corn, as you know, grows on farms, and where there is a farm there is a farmer or maybe four. Farming is no easy job, so if we count the wife, 3 children, and five helpers, already we have on the order of 10 or more people involved with my lunch.

After the corn is harvested, it has to be shipped and sold. This involves at least one, maybe two, truck drivers.

Some corn will make it to a mill where the corn will be ground to a powder. In a typical corn processing plant, I expect there would be at least 20 people working there; but probably more.

After the corn is ground, it then has to be made into corn chips. Let’s say it takes 10 people to do the job.

Next, the corn chips have to be sent to the restaurant. Another truck driver or two.

Then, there are the people who work at the restaurant. Today I saw about 5.

So, thus far I have counted about forty people necessary to provide my delectable meal; but I did not take into account the people it took to invent the necessary farming equipment, or to design and make a semi-truck, or make the roads they travel on, or to build the restaurant–not to mention that the corn may have come from the other side of the world! I would wager that it took more than a 1000 people to provide a single corn chip for my delectable meal. Then, of course you have to consider the black bean and the rice, and the chicken…maybe even 10,000 people!