Food around the world

[offdalip]

this is what you will eat relocating

http://freshpics.blogspot.com/2010/07/what-people-eat-around-world.html

[Dame]

Very interesting.  Noticed the high proportion of beverages in the German household (@ approx $500/week), and the high proportion of meat in the Mongol home (@ approx $50 / week).

Mongolia does not get enough heat in the summer to grow most grains or vegetables and therefore grass fed meat would be the most cost effective local produce. 

[offdalip]

yeah , contrast the mongols with the cubans who instead look like they get a little piece of chicken for the same $50 but much more fruits veggies

[Atash Hagmahani]

Good post. Fascinating.

Not entirely what I expected. Dame, I was surprised that the Mongolians have as much access to produce as they do. Their diet used to be significantly MORE meat-and-dairy based. Obviously they're buying food from the Chinese.

The Kuwaitis eating a lot of luxury imported produce, that is not traditional to the Bedouin. My mom said the food in Saudi Arabia was also luxurious, with lots of fine imported produce.

That German diet has too much meat and too much beer. I know Germans are a lot fussier about un-natural preservatives, flavors, and food colors than English-speakers but the overall balance looks wrong, and they probably get too much traditional preservative like nitrates in preserved meats. Promotes heart attacks. That killed meinen deutschen Opa (Grandpa). Germany and Japan are leaders in relatively benign high-tech preservation methods so things might be changing.

English speakers eat too much processed food! Yikes, especially that first American family, that eats way too much fast-food. I really appreciate, though, how candid both the families and the photographer were. That is really useful for thinking about diet.

Something that really stuck me was how humans can compensate quite a bit for income level without compromising food value too much. In fact the most affluent diets are unhealthy. It doesn't get bad until you're down to bags of rice like the Mali refugees. I'll hazard a guess that the refugee center gives them vitamin tablets to compensate, otherwise they'd be dead of scurvy.

Looks like fare is pretty meager for the Ecuadorians too. It is strange to think of people who live that close to the equator bundled up like that and having so little fresh produce. Obviously they are mountain people living at extremely high elevations, and apparently not trading with folks at lower altitudes to get more fresh produce. I was under the impression that in the Andes both trade and actually owning fields at different altitudes is common; these people are apparently very poor.

Price levels don't mean all that much despite globalized trade. Those Chinese families are eating VERY well. First of all some foods are subsidized in China, second, the renmenbi is obviously very undervalued.

The Indians eating fairly well too--they simply eat lower on the food chain overall, but they get some nice produce that would be expensive in many countries. The rupee also obviously undervalued. Those folks are probably in the tropical south.

[Dame]

The Indians eating fairly well too--they simply eat lower on the food chain overall, but they get some nice produce that would be expensive in many countries. The rupee also obviously undervalued. Those folks are probably in the tropical south.

I read something in the last couple of weeks about  60% of Indian children being malnourished.  So someone's information is obviously misinformation.

[Atash Hagmahani]

I was referring to the obviously middle-class family, not all Indians in general.

However malnutrition is not as common in some of the poor parts of India as one might infer from statistics, simply because people do eat low on the food chain. Southern Indians eat a lot of rice and pulses in place of meat, which they do not tend to eat much of anyway due to the heat and lack of refrigeration. They live longer than Saudi Arabs who are much wealthier (but not only commonly smoke, they hold the hookah smoke in their lungs).

Indians tend to have fewer vices. Drinking and drugs exist but are uncommon there (except perhaps among the hippies in Goa and a few other hotspots).

[offdalip]

I think there is variability, obviously the samples in the pics are geared towards above average earners in their countries. except for maybe Mali. that looks like a wreck

[Lady Lilya]

I know Germans are a lot fussier about un-natural preservatives, flavors, and food colors than English-speakers but the overall balance looks wrong, and they probably get too much traditional preservative like nitrates in preserved meats. Promotes heart attacks.

If your blood type is A.  No correlation if your blood type is O. 

English speakers eat too much processed food! Yikes, especially that first American family, that eats way too much fast-food. I really appreciate, though, how candid both the families and the photographer were. That is really useful for thinking about diet.

It was good to see more than one representative of the USA.  There is so much variety from one family to the next. 

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What really struck me about the Sudanese family in the camp in Chad is how much fuel would be necessary to render that food digestible.  The other pictures have a lot of meat and veggies and fruit (and already prepared foods).  Those can be eaten raw or barely cooked (ie rare beef). 

[silverseeds]

 My mom said the food in Saudi Arabia was also luxurious, with lots of fine imported produce.

that really depends where you are. I had family that lived there over a decade. most meats and produce were super expensive.

[Ozark Lady]

Wow, folks sure spend alot per week on food.  I wonder if they adjusted for family sizes?
I can't imagine spending what they say American families spend.
I spent 2 weeks in Germany, and they didn't eat those expensive items.
I have a friend in Ecuador, we talk alot about Ecuador.
They have it great there, they can grow anything.  My friend doesn't need to buy food, she can stick anything into the ground and it grows.  She does have to sweep off volcanic ash quite often, but things grow great.

I would be shocked if I spent more than $200.00 per month, and we pretty much have meat at least once a day, and lots of fresh produce.
I do not buy processed or convenience foods, but my junk food junkie hubby does occasionally buy junk.
Now my hubby does buy lunch out daily, so I suppose that would need to be added to our costs.
My norm is about 80.00 and it lasts about 2 weeks with an extra produce run in between.

[Lady Lilya]

According to my records, I spend about $200 a week in the category of "Nutrition", which includes food, beverages, and supplements.  That includes a lot of meat, some fruit and berries, organic green leafies, organic eggs, organic milk and cream and butter, some deli sliced meats, and some quality bread, and misc other things.  I feel like we are eating very luxuriously.  We get so much good stuff for that money.  We could live on a lot less. 

We would NOT get so much for the money if we had so many prepackaged foods, like you see in all the pictures from the USA on that site.  And I see lots of takeout.  If we ate out just once per week, that would add about $200 a month.  I can see by facebook posts that most of my peers are going out to eat a lot more than once per week. 

[Atash Hagmahani]

I am cutting my own personal costs as a result of shifting my own diet.

With a toddler in my care most of the time, I do not have time to do any real cooking. However, processed foods are poorly-balanced, with too much carbohydrate and too much fat, and not enough protein for my goal of reducing the insulin load on my system.

So, I'm ending up eating quinoa, beans, and vegetables breakfast lunch and dinner, pretty much.

Not sure what else to do.

I'm not imposing this Spartan diet on any of the rest of my family. I don't think they would tolerate it.

[Lady Lilya]

How about more eggs?  That's good protein.

[Ryder]

I just gave some roadkill to some friends (the freezer was getting full and I hadn't gotten around to doing anything with the porkipine quills). They gave me some delightfull little "banty" eggs. Banties being those tough little chickens that will poop on anything valuable in your barn.

[Atash Hagmahani]

We do have our own supply of eggs, and I do eat them usually not so much straight as I do as a binder in something else.

I like Banties (Bantams). They're cute. When I was about 9 or 10 we used to have 4 little red banty hens and a much bigger rooster--the old-fashioned kind with lots of red and green feathers, big tail and comb.

One day one of the banties turned listless; it seemed sudden (chickens don't seem to malinger as long as humans do) but we had noticed that earlier "someone" was laying undersized eggs (possible side-effect of old age). I put her in a box in the little building that housed the pump for the well, and kept vigil.

She expired.

Anyway, to keep the cost of feeding the chickens down, I need to hurry up and get some millet planted.

Millet is not complete or particularly generous protein but it's easy to grow and chickens love it. They can also eat leftover scraps from human tables, and found bugs and snails.