Time is running an excellent photo essay depicting the amount of food consumed by various families in the course of a week, from 15 countries around the world.
In Chad, this family living in a refugee camp spends around $1.23 per week, mostly to make soup with fresh sheep meat.
In North Carolina, this family spends $341.98 per week on spaghetti, potatoes, sesame chicken (piles of pizza and soda also involved).
The photos are stunning, as is the variance in weekly expenditure, from the $1.23 in Chad to the $500 spent by the Bargteheide family on fried potatoes with onions, bacon and herring, fried noodles with eggs and cheese, pizza, vanilla pudding. Of course, every family is different, and there is no attempt to portray anything like a “typical” family.
What I find so incredible about the photo set is not the cost of goods or the abundance of goods, but the health of the diets of the people inbetween the poor and wealthy. The inbetween lots seem to have the best balance between modern processed goods and fresh fruits and vegtables. The wealthiest and poorest families have the least fresh produce. Interesting indeed…
I would love to see a similiar photo set on world military spending.
I wonder how one would represent military spending in a photo essay. Bush and Putin like tiny dots atop piles of nukes so large you have to shoot it from a weather balloon to fit it all in the frame?