Monday, November 23, 2015

Today's menu



To better understand the average availability of food let’s try to make a day’s diet out of it. Perhaps it would look like this:
  • For breakfast you drink tea or coffee with sugar, eat three slices of bread (or cereal based porridge) upon which you use a vegetable oil based margarine and a sweet fruit-based condiment.
  • For lunch you eat tortillas, and two potatoes (or yams, cassava or sweet potatoes), with tomatoes and onions fried in vegetable oil. Once a week you also have a fish.
  • For dinner you eat boiled rice with a stew of beans, cabbage and a small piece of meat. You round off with a banana, an apple, an orange or half a mango.  
  • In the evening you drink a very small soda or a beer and snack on roasted groundnuts or soybeans.
With more elaborated figures it looks like this:

Table 4 Global food supply per capita per day 2009

grams
kcal
%kcal
Wheat
181
532
19%
Rice
146
536
19%
Maize
47
141
5%
Cereals, other
28
82
3%
Starchy roots (potatoes, cassava etc.)
167
136
5%
Sugar and sweeteners
64
224
8%
Beans and peas
18
62
2%
Soybeans and groundnuts
20
56
2%
Vegetable oils
32
277
10%
Vegetables
361
87
3%
Fruits
200
92
3%
Alcoholic beverages
98
67
2%
Meat
115
230
8%
Animal fats
9
60
2%
Milk
239
134
5%
Fish, seafood
51
33
1%
Other
82
100
3%
Total
1,857
2,849
100%
Source: FAOSTAT

But the average food supply varies greatly geographically. The food supply per Indian is 2,321 kcal while it is 3,688 for the average Ameri­can. The average Indian gets almost two thirds of their calories from cereals, pulses and root crops while these crops only contribute a quarter of the calories of the American. Sugar and fats contribute almost 40% of the American’s calories but just 21% of the Indian’s. Animal products, including fish, make up 28% of the calorie supply of an American but only 9% for the average Indian. Clearly, the agriculture systems that produce those two diets are very different and the ecological footprints of the diets are also very different. 

Extracted from Global Eating Disorder.  


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