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Thursday, June 07, 2007

What the World Eats

I found the link to this interesting photo gallery on my cousin's blog. It is an interesting look at what families eat all around the world. I found it fascinating to look at the amount of junk food compared to vegetables, processed foods compared to primary-source foods, and how much each family spends on food per week. And how much soda some families consume! Wow. I'm thinking of doing the same for our family, but I'd have to carefully document what we ate in a week to get an honest picture. Now that we don't live way out I can just run to the store that's just a mile away to pick up ice cream, or a forgotten ingredient, or whatever.

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1626519_1373664,00.html

3 comments:

Mimi said...

I read that in my TIME this week. What I found odd was the high cost of grocery shopping - I don't think I could spend 300/week if I tried, do you?

Magpie Ima said...

I could *easily* spend $300 a week if I felt I could justify it. Between farmers markets and natural food stores, $300/week would be no problem. If I had it. Which I don't.

Elizabeth--the book that these photos are from is at the library. We had it out for a while sometime last year. There are other related books looking at people's possessions among other things.

Elizabeth said...

Well, I'd probably have trouble spending quite that much, but I don't see it as a *huge* amount to spend. I think it'd be an even more interesting study if they included info on how far each family's food travelled, who produced it and how much the workers were paid to process it.

Also I'm wondering if that includes restaurant expenses. I could spend way over $300 if it does, and from the statistics I hear, people are dining out more and more all the time. Some of the pictures showed restaurant pizza and fast-food sodas, so I'm assuming yes. My own spending would climb exponentially if it did include restaurants, because I don't eat at fast-food restaurants. However, the overall cost to humanity would be better, because I don't consume someone else's labor at minimum wage or the environmental cost of animals kept in feedlots.

Magpie: do you remember the title of the book? I suppose it must be on the website somewhere.

 
SC