STRUTH! That's a ton o' tucker

IN HIS CONTINUING SEARCH FOR THE WORLD'S MORE WEIRD, WHACKY AND UNUSUAL, DAVID ELLIS has found that the sea certainly does appear to give holidaymakers something of an extra in the way of appetites.

On an average South Pacific or New Zealand cruise, passengers and crew on P&O's Pacific Sun chomp and slurp their way through 80 tonnes of food and drink, including 50,000 eggs, a tonne of bacon, 2.8 tonnes of chicken, 2.5 of rice, 1.5 of pineapples, a tonne of lettuce, 375kg of coffee, 5000 litres of milk and 7500 tea bags.

Then there's the few tonnes of beef, nearly as much lamb and veal, a tonne or so of fish, potatoes by the truckload, enough soup to fill a milk tanker, more fresh fruit and vegies to cut up than you'd like to think about, and enough breakfast cereals to keep the average family regular for a year.

And to clean the 13,000 plates, 10,000 glasses and 15,000 pieces of cutlery needed to down all this every day, a bank of 29 dishwashers is in service almost around the clock.