Shocking State of World Food and Poverty Inequality Revealed in New Visualization

SEATTLE, November 22, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

A huge disparity in world food consumption has been revealed in new study that shows the countries that consume the least amount of calories in fact spend the most amount of food.

The new data visualization developed by FoodServiceWarehouse.com, analyzes the daily calorie consumption for the top twenty and bottom twenty food consuming countries in the world and compared this to the average percent of income spent on food.

The infographic shows that the lowest calorie consuming countries in the world spend more than half of their income on food, yet the highest calorie consumption countries spend less than 25% of its income.

Despite being the highest calorie consuming country in the world with an average 3,700, the USA spends just 6.9 percent of its income on food. However, Angola, which is one of the 14 African countries in the 20 lowest consumption countries, spends a huge 80 percent of income on food.

The UK consumes an average of 3,500 calories, it spends just 8.8 percent of income on food. The huge difference in the world's food consumption is clear when comparing the UK's statistics with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which consumes just 1,500 calories but the average person spends half of their income on food.

Not one of the lowest-consumption countries is located in Europe, yet unlike many of the other high-consumption countries, Romania spends almost 35 percent of its income on food.

To view the interactive infographic: http://www.foodservicewarehouse.com/calorie-viz/

For more information: http://blog.foodservicewarehouse.com/blog/2011/11/10/visualizing-the-worlds-calorie-consumption-infographic/

Notes to editors

Background on the data

All data was pulled from publicly available datasets. The calorie consumption data comes from a report from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The calories consumed by country (per capita) data was sourced from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN). The percent income spent on food comes from various household expenditure surveys (conducted independently by country by various research bodies), which are the most useful and reliable measure of this type of countrywide statistic.

About FoodServiceWarehouse.com

Founded in 2006, FoodServiceWarehouse.com is the industry's one-stop shop for high-quality restaurant equipment, brand-name supplies and educational resources for the conscientious foodservice operator.

For more information please contact:
Lexi Mills
PR Consultant, Distilled Ltd.
lexi.mills@distilled.co.uk
Tel: +44(0)20-7183-0767
Mob: +44(0)79-2102-0345
Or
Michael Pantoliano
mike.pantoliano@distilled.net