Visualizing the World's Food Consumption
foodservicewarehouse.com
foodservicewarehouse.com
†http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/us_hunger_facts.ht...
(a) that article being largely made-up BS to exaggerate the size of a problem that barely exists (i.e. by using ridiculously broad categories for "food insecure" and a measurement methodology which involves cajoling people into agreeing that they are indeed "food-insecure") and
(b) the fact that a few people are terrible at making life decisions and somehow manage to prioritize some variety of stupid crap or another (drugs, alcohol, gambling) over feeding themselves and their families.
Talking about "one seventh of households in the United States being food insecure" is a complete joke, when there's people in those orange countries that really can't get enough to eat.
it is not a "problem that barely exists" for the children [or the other dependents] of these few from the (b)
Rhinoceros attacks, for instance, are "barely a problem"... unless you're one of those poor unfortunates who is suffering from one.
Fun fact: wikipedia has a category http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Deaths_due_to_rhinocer...
sounds like you do think that 10%+ (food insecure) or 3%+ (food insecurity with hunger) of US population is "statistically small number of people". Who'd care about 30M+ (10M+) of people who "are terrible at making life decisions and somehow manage to prioritize some variety of stupid crap or another (drugs, alcohol, gambling) over feeding themselves and their families" and their children! Or may be you just not aware about the facts?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States#Fo...
I know there are food programmes and soup kitchens --but those suffer from poor funding. I mean, I feel that we should make sure everyone has access to balanced nutrition (not talking gourmet --just good nutrition) regardless of why they might not be able to afford it themselves.
Fair enough. Well, if that's what you believe then I wish you well in your philanthropic endeavours. How much are you thinking of donating?
On a certain level, when you are babying people and doing things for them, those people learn to depend on you and not learn for themselves. Initially those programmes were setup for the hardest hit people as a /temporary/ solution, but now it seems to have become a permanent one.
Just like lunch programmes at schools to feed kids. They shouldn't exist because it teaches the parents that they don't need to think about feeding their children something healthy every day of the year. It puts the onus on a school system which is usually lacking in funds, so it makes decisions not solely based on children's health. By allowing the school system to feed their child, parents have extra income to spend on...what? In the Bronx, my wife was seeing 6-7 year olds arrive to school hungry (breakfast and lunch programmes were provided) but had the latest Timberland shoes and name-brand clothes.
It's sad, but people these days need to be educated about eating and parenting.
Yikes!
The point I was trying to make, is that why is such a rich country as the US serving such low quality food.
Anyway, the other poster is correct: while you can if you're sufficiently stupid go to an American supermarket and fill your shopping trolley with garbage, you can also get a huge variety of amazing high quality food that would be absolutely astonishing to anyone living in all but a handful of other countries, and mega-astonishing to anyone living in any time period prior to today. Your ancestors hoed fields for ten hours a day to scrape together enough nutrition to not die, and you're turning up your nose at a loaf of bread that can feed you for two days, costs the equivalent of 90 seconds' labour, and will remain edible for three whole weeks? Get some perspective!
PS. Anyone thinking of replying to say that bread is evil and I should be on a paleo diet: can we just assume we've already had this conversation and get on with our days?
All sounds like such luxury to me though... 1,200 calories a day to just to remain forever 50 pounds overweight... ugh...
Is there any explanation of the methodology by which these numbers were derived? I don't think it's possible to accurately measure this kind of thing -- heck, I have enough trouble keeping track of how many calories I, personally, am consuming, so I have no idea how you could average it over the entire population. You could measure food production, but we don't know exactly how much is wasted.
I do note, however, that:
a) It still doesn't say precisely how food consumption is estimated.
b) However it does say this: "The food consumption refers to the amount of food available for human consumption as estimated by the FAO Food Balance Sheets. However the actual food consumption may be lower than the quantity shown as food availability depending on the magnitude of wastage and losses of food in the household, e.g. during storage, in preparation and cooking, as plate-waste or quantities fed to domestic animals and pets, thrown or given away."
-- which explains the implausibly high numbers for some of the western countries; not every calorie bought is a calorie consumed (I know a lot of my food goes off before I get a chance to eat it).
It seems plausible to me that they don't count waste.
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/08/13/the-michael-phelps-di...
It all depends on where the calories go/spent on.
>wouldn't such a person consistently gain a pound or two a month, every month?
Looking around [Bay Area, smart people filling up gyms on weekdays and trails on weekends] there are a lot of people with 30-50+ pounds of extra weight - it just looks so typical, that it became a new normal (I myself being in relatively good physical shape is 190lb at 6' height - this is about 30lb heavier than when i was 20 years ago a student back in Russia and 40lb lighter than what i became after the first year in the US before i got back in shape.)
I suspect it's a mix of undercounting people and WASTED food being counted as eaten.
I read an estimate somewhere that 25% of food in the US is wasted (it's not that high in my house, my shamefully it's too high, and I have absolutely no problem believing that number).
no, it is what left after the wasted amount is taken out.
>I read an estimate somewhere that 25% of food in the US is wasted (it's not that high in my house, my shamefully it's too high, and I have absolutely no problem believing that number).
"In 2004, the U.S. food supply provided 3,900 calories per person per day. Accounting for waste, the average American consumed 2,775 calories per day in 2007– an increase of 28% from 1970"
"The food consumption refers to the amount of food available for human consumption as estimated by the FAO Food Balance Sheets. However the actual food consumption may be lower than the quantity shown as food availability depending on the magnitude of wastage and losses of food in the household, e.g. during storage, in preparation and cooking, as plate-waste or quantities fed to domestic animals and pets, thrown or given away."