During the broadcast of the Olympics in China, I have seen the correspondents on TV try a lot of unconventional foods. We all know that food consumption worldwide is obviously very diverse but have you ever wondered what does this actually looks like? What does one week of food look like for your family?

I was weeding through my bulk mail folder and I found something that although my spam filter had correctly classified as spam, my human filter found very interesting. It was a massively sent email with some very interesting photographs of families posing next to all the food they normally eat during one week. Each photograph is from a different and unique part of the world and states the total food cost for that week in their local currency and in US dollars. I mashed these from the mail but later found out that they are from a book by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio called Hungry Planet.

Besides the ethnic and cultural differences in the people and their setting, the most interesting thing that stands out to me is the contrast in the amounts of packaging or (waste) per food item. If you compare say Ecuador ($32/week) in the top middle to Kuwait ($222/week) or Norther California ($324/week) on each side, you may at first think that some of that price differential is accredited to the unnecessary and excessive processing and packaging. Then I thought that I would be willing to bet that most of that Ecuadorian food shown is uncertified but never the less 100% organic and fresh which does not require any packaging. Let me ask you this, how much do you think all that organic food would cost In a WholeFoods or Trader Joe’s up in Northern California?

Also found a good quality presentation of the whole photograph collection here

Everywhere we turn today, we are bombarded by amazing statistics. The information is out there and anyone can drop a scary statistic like the US consumes 200 billion plastic bottle each year” in order to make a point. All we really get form these statistic it that it’s a lot and even if we write it out 200,000,000,000 we see a lot of zeros but we still don’t really understand the dimensions and sheer scale of this number. As a society, we have grown accustomed to scary statistics to a point that they no longer have the desired impact that they once did. Artist Chris Jordan’s latest prints are a great tool to help us gain a more real understanding of these insane numbers. Chris helps us visualize what these statistics really look like and in term gives renewed impact, relevance and meaning to the numbers.

This stuff is huge business, according to a recent article in Treehugger bottled water using this type of container like the Dasani brand from Coca Cola has a markup of up 10,000% from the cost of production making it one of the most profitable commodities around. I can’t believe that I just referred to water as a commodity. Some of these bottles of water are transported from across the globe and require up to 7 bottles of clean water in the production of each bottle container.

Although they are designed to last for a very long time, almost all of these plastic containers have an extremely short life of use especially by the consumer. How long does it take to drink a 20 oz bottle of soda or water? After that primary use, these containers are denominated recyclable garbage worth about 5 cents a unit in most states.

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