What A Week Of Groceries Looks Like Around The World

I took one of those free nutrition courses on coursera.org where the author of the book these photos gave a 2 part presentation on his book. Some things he explained.

1) The book has been out for years. After looking at their picture in the book, the American family realized they needed to make changes in their diet and collectively lost some weight together and changed their diet.

2) There were 2 other USA families pictured in the book. One was a Hispanic family from San Antonio, but their photo wasn't as bad as the one that gets passed about the internet as the "typical" American diet. Still pretty bad though because the father got free pizzas from the pizza chain he worked at, although the pizzas were on the back counter less prominently displayed.
http://killingbirdswithstones.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/peter-menzel-hungry-planet-what-the-world-eats-america-2.jpg?w=1200&h=
The other was that 80's-ish looking picture--and for all you judgey people of the Midwest, that family is from California. The book took years to compile so yes it is a very old picture.

3) Greenland has one of the worst diets. There is very little fresh vegetables or fruit available in their climate, so they are forced to eat prepackaged foods and animal meats such as whale and seal. The photographer noted that shortly after the picture of the family was taken, the father of the family had a stroke, which occur at higher rates in Greenland. The family was not overweight, and in fact the father was a physically active man who went out dog sledding for work.
http://killingbirdswithstones.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/peter-menzel-hungry-planet-what-the-world-eats-greenland.jpg?w=1200&h=

4) There were two families from China pictured. One from rural China and one from the city. The urban China family has a large part of a table covered with items from KFC--the teenage son loves KFC and eats it regularly. A new KFC opens in China EACH DAY. China loves KFC. It will be interesting to see their obesity numbers as years go on.

I'm having a hard time believing some of these are only one week's worth of food. I've been staring at the American one(s), trying to piece together what I'm seeing and figure out what everyone must be eating & in what quantity in order to use some of this stuff up in only seven days. It makes me think part of the point of these photos is the incredible amount of waste in first-world countries, rather than just "LOL Americans eat a lot." I'd bet anything that a lot of the food in some of the more overstuffed photos -- the US in particular -- is simply thrown away. I guess it's easier for us to buy too much pre-made and throw out what we don't use... whereas some of the other countries clearly only purchase/harvest exactly what they need and waste absolutely nothing.

This is so interesting - Thanks for sharing. Along with nutrition insights across the globe - the economic disparity is clearly visible! Chad and Mali broke my heart .

I am amazed by all the boxed packaged food items and processed foods in America and other countries. Everything in moderation as long as you are in a good healthy range weight. For me shopping at the grocery store, I typically stay away from the middle isles as this is the fat trap. I enjoy good quality ingredient and natural process state. Sure I love pizza, cakes and cookies all in moderation. You are what you eat!

Great post - thank you for sharing :flowerforyou:

Bump to read later

This seems fairly accurate. And goes to show how bad processed foods actually are.

That being said, there is a huge variation in how often people eat out / in restaurants. A lot of Americans get a lot of extra calories from cheap takeout/fast food. The French eat healthy in restaurants too, but that's also where they get most of their wine. In Germany it's not as common to eat out.

As a Scandinavian I was really hoping for an example from North Europe too!

Anyone stop and think there is a reason Americans tend to choose pre-packaged, processed foods OTHER than they simply do not know any better? Maybe it's the cost of living here. Maybe it's because of the rate of single parent households. Maybe it's the fact that even as a 2 parent household... both parents still maintain 1-2 full time jobs. Canadians have a baby and take the whole year off. Americans have a baby and (speaking from experience) may have to be back at work the very next WEEK! If we were more like other countries in that regard, perhaps we would make the same food choices and be able to prepare more meals from home. Just a thought. It's not always from laziness and over-indulgence.

I don't know what you mean by cost of living. The cost of food is WAY lower in the US than it is in Scandinavia, Germany or France. The cost of living is also a lot lower unless you live in NYC or LA.
I'm from Norway, and our general obesity rate, with the world's most expensive food, is overall 10% against 28,5% in the US. Salaries are higher, but food is still disproportionally expensive.
China has approx the same amount of single households as the US, yet their obesity rate is less than 5%.

I don't think costs or politics are to blame. I'm not sure exactly what causes the obesity i the US, but it's rooted deep into the culture.

I am shocked at how little meat there is in these pics. To me that just does not seem realistic. I also did not realize it was a weeks worth of food I thought it was more.

I guess I'll be the first person to say that our food used to look exactly like that first American family. Tons of take out (burgers and hoagies for lunch and Chinese & pizzeria food for dinner) and what meals were prepared at home always included a can, box, jar or packet of some sort with lots of chips and soda inbetween.

Maybe this site attracts a more health conscious segment of the population but from what I could see our diet seemed to be the norm. Cooking from scratch like I do now is seen as a bit weird and eccentric. Certainly people think it's too time consuming -- even something as simple as mixing up your own seasonings and spice mixes instead of buying a packet of taco seasoning or something people will tell me they don't have the time for "all of that".