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Why the world’s poorest spend the most on food

Adria Saracino of Distilled, a creative digital agency, shares an interactive infographic on global food consumption and income using data from a surprising source: Food Service Warehouse.

Developing countries consume much less than Western nations, particularly in times of crisis, like with what we’re seeing in Somalia. However, despite a lower caloric intake, these poorer countries’ citizens spend more than 50 percent of their income on food.

A visualization of the 20 highest and lowest calorie consuming countries compared with those same countries’ percent of income spent on food. Built by Food Service Warehouse.

Food Service Warehouse (FSW) created the interactive infographic to the left (click to launch) to explore the caloric intake of the 20 richest and poorest countries. They were expecting to see a lower average calorie consumption between the two sets of countries, but were surprised to find that the poorer countries spent more than half of their income on food.

Since FSW works with a lot of different organizations in the food industry, they have access to large sets of data. They utilize this data to explore its customers and industry, and in the process, often make startling discoveries. This food consumption infographic was developed after analyzing data for a competitive eating infographic. While conducting research on calorie consumption in the US, FSW noticed there was a huge difference in calorie intake among US citizens. These differences — attributed to factors like height, gender, activity level and geography — result in an average daily consumption of 3770 calories per person.

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