The Sunday Times magazine had a photo feature this week called the
World on a Plate taken form a book: What the World Eats, by Peter
Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio. It compared the shopping of 'average'
families from around the world, including UK, Chad, China, Egypt,
Philippines, Australia, India, Turkey, USA and Germany.
The main thrust of the piece was the cost rather than the dietary
side (in fact the weekly shopping was broken down into similar
categories, such as grains, dairy, beverages, etc). And while the
West/Others divide was not unexpected, I couldn't help but notice
that the UK family spent half that of the German one, though the
national weekly income figures included seemed to show they were not
necessarily applying like with like.
But the thing that struck me most in these photos was the amount of
packaging the 'Western' families' foodstuffs involved: bottles,
Tetrapaks, cardboard boxes, etc. Especially... the Germans. But I
guess they do at least recycle all this stuff. In Chad of course,
they shop local and practice 'reduce' above all.
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