I was watching a cooking show the other day where the host (Jamie Oliver) was traveling through Italy exploring local cooking. The host’s contention was that even in relatively poor communities the people ate very fresh, well prepared food.
I may be way off base but it struck me that these people must spend a small fortune on food. So I was wondering, what do different countries spend on food? Is it really true that a larger portion of other people in countries (I mean other than the USA) income goes to buying food, or am I mistaken?
For comparison purposes I was thinking we could list percent of gross income per adult fed and country. For example mine would be;
3.1% of gross income/Adult – USA (Chicago if that makes a difference)
So, tell me where you’re from and what you spend to feed yourselves. If we get enough responses it might be interesting to compile the results.
You might check out the book “Hungry Planet”, by Peter Menzel. He traveled around the world and photographed families in different countries surrounded by a week’s worth of food from their typical diet. It’s a really striking way to compare the eating habits and quality of diet between different countries and cultures.
In Phnom Penh, I was told that a family of three adults, a teen, and a kid spend $5 a day total on food, which is terrifically high given their per capita income and other expenses.
I understand the premise but I think that the variations from person to person are going to be far too great to get an impression of what one country is like versus the other.
For example, I probably spend about about $50 a week on food which includes dining out, take out/fast food, and groceries. That’s probably a really low number for someone in my living situation and probably much less than what my peers spend. Doing the quick math in my head I probably spend something on the order of 3-4% of my gross pre-tax income on food. Similar to you, in Chicago as well ironically.
I have a good friend, a girl who consumes probably half the calories I do, that spends probably 4 times that. She prefers organic foods and upscale dining out and almost never eats fast food or processed/prepared foods. Considering her salary is probably half of mine she’s spending something on the order of 20-25% of her gross income on food.
I can’t imagine that these types of variations are unique to the U.S. or to Chicago.
I imagine you’re basing your estimate on the relative cost of fresh produce in the US, which (I understand from previous discussions) is unusually high. In most of the world, people can buy locally grown produce, in season, for considerably less than the equivalent in imported pre-processed, packaged, transported, chilled/dried/frozen etc products.
There are other economies too, in buying the raw ingredients, especially if you’re cooking for a family. If you buy, say, four frozen risottos, then all you have is one meal. If you buy the ingredients, then it costs very little extra to buy just that little bit more that allows you (with the addition of a couple of storecupboard ingredients you have in anyway) to make two or three other meals.
This is the reason for the wide variation in regional and seasonal cooking across Italy (and other countries) – people eating what’s available cheaply around them, when it’s available.
I am not a good example myself as I always eat out nowadays (I have cleared out my refrigerator and pulled the plug).
The German-language sources that I found say that Germans spend 11.7 % of their income on foodstuffs (figure from 2004); one source also said that Italians spend 14.5 % and Greeks 15 %, not quoting sources. http://www.ngo-online.de/ganze_nachricht.php?Nr=12483. Commentators often say that German consumers’ demand for cheap food has contributed to declining standards and that we really should not feel entitled to complain about food scandals, as we are getting what we pay for.
I’m in the UK and mine is probably about 4-5% of annual income, but that doesn’t include eating out because I don’t do it very often. OTOH, I do buy organic produce regularly and am prepared to spend more to get decent quality things.
Peace Corps BG made all us volunteers do a full accounting of our spending during November (so they know if they’re paying us enough, etc.) so I can tell you exactly: I spent 96.86 on market food, and 32.80 on meals out (although that includes a pretty pricey Thanksgiving meal in a restaurant, so it’s higher than normal).
That’s ~US $63 and ~US $21, respectively. I live alone.
I can’t tell you how often I am asked something to the effect of “Isn’t food expensive here? It’s much cheaper in America, isn’t it?” My assurances that food is far more expensive in the US tend not to be believed, as far as I can tell.
OTOH, when I lived in the US and spent about $200/month on groceries, that was 10% of my income after taxes. Currently I spend about 25% of my income on groceries. And my living allowance is quite good by Bulgarian standards; I am paid twice as much as my Bulgarian coworkers.
you might want to search on the “big mac index”, which has been a benchmark for about 20 years now on relative prices. A big mac incorporates costs for labor, land, investment, raw material, etc, and provides not a bad benchmark for relative food costs between countries.
Personal stats: About $300/month to feed myself alone, which is nearly 15% of my gross income. This is admittedly working only part-time, ~25 hrs/wk. For comparison purposes, if I was working full-time at my current hourly rate, it would be about 9% of my gross income.
I eat very similarly when I’m unemployed, subemployed and employed with a ridiculously high salary; the only times I eat out are when I’m away from home and once or twice a year for family celebrations; if I have to eat at work I prefer to bring my own food if possible. So the % of my income that goes toward food varies a lot, yet I’m still having pretty much the same food; it’s the income that can change from 400€ to 6000€/month (both pre tax) in a matter of days.
I want to second and third this. We do all our fruit/veg/meat shopping at the market (=“farmers market” in the US, I think) and it’s easily half the price of buying similar items at the supermarket, and considerably less than processed food too. Probably averages about $A6 a kilo for meat and the fruit and veg would be somewhere between $1 and $4 a kilo (we do limit ourselves to the cheaper end of the range, but that still gives us a fair range to choose from). We’d save a bucket if we only ate fresh market food, and I imagine the disparity in prices would be even greater for someone who actually lives out where the food is grown.
I live in TN, in the US, and figure about 15% of my family weekly income goes toward food. Around sixty bucks. We eat good, lots of veggies and beans and rice, very little meat. My weakness is sugary snacks, but they’re cheap to make. I don’t do box meals or bags of cookies/chips and we haven’t gone out to eat since my birthday LAST December.
Now this is JUST food, not counting cat food/litter, diapers, tp, dish soap, toiletries, etc. All that calculated in we spend roughly 130 dollars a week.
Family of three. Two adults and a toddler (and four cats).
For our family of 3 (2 adults/1 boy aged 8) we spend $500/month on food or about 12% of our income. We buy organic raw milk (very expensive), organic meats, veggies, etc. We do our best to buy fresh, locally grown produce. We are members of a local natural foods co-op. We could eat for much cheaper if we wanted. We could probably do it on half that, but we wouldn’t enjoy it.
Actually now that I think of it, this $500 includes food for 2 dogs and 2 cats as well as household items you’d buy at the grocery store, like toilet paper and cleaning supplies. So I guess the percentage is smaller, but I don’t really know how much we spend on those things vs. food.
I think I probably spend about 10% of my take-home income on food, although this would be substantially less if I choose the cheapest options available rather than organic/free range options.
The one thing that cooking shows (like Jamie Oliver) have done here is that because of the increased awareness of food and eating the quality of produce has improved dramatically. We produce execptional fruit, vegetables and meat but in the past most of it was exported due to the higher prices paid in other countries. Since people are demanding better food and are willing to pay the price our quality and choice has improved dramatically. We even get some nice imported fruits that wasn’t available here previously.
I wonder if, in poorer countries, the ratio isn’t skewed by the fact that food is entertainment as well (at least to a greater extent than in the West). When I was in Vietnam, one of the first things that struck me was the fact that people ate out a lot. Nearly every night, the people in the area I was staying in seemed to buy their meals rather than cook them. Well, okay, maybe half to two thirds of the time. Their meals were very social affairs, compared to Joe Westerner microwaving a TV dinner for the sole purpose of sustenance.
I’m not trying to belittle the plight of people in the Third World who have to spend a large proportion of their incomes on food, but somehow I can’t help thinking they get a better deal in a certain way. I’d be lucky to eat out once a month.