Let them eat apples and oranges

This is a follow-up post to Let them eat ice cream.

A very interesting set of photos has been making the rounds showing families from around the world, the amount of food they consume and how much it costs in US dollars. The photos originally appeared in Hungry Planet: What the World Eats by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio. They have been illegally reproduced and sent in emails and even posted on a Flickr account that has been viewed more than 27,000 times!

On a first glance, it is shocking to compare a German family that spends $500 per week on food and a Bhutanese family that spends $5 per week. But upon more reflection you begin to notice a lot of variables that have to be taken into account.

Caveat: Let me interrupt here and say that I am not an economist so what I’m sharing with you is my own amateur research.

One indicator that we can compare is Gross National Income per capita.

Country	Cost/week	GNI per capita	Percentage
Germany	$500	$34,580	1.44 %
Bhutan	$5	$760	0.65 %

Sources: Rural Poverty Portal, UNICEF.

The German income is forty-five times greater than the Bhutanese income! But when we compare the relative cost of food for the two families in the book we can see that the Bhutanese family spends comparatively less on food than the German family. While the Germans are juggling mortgages and credit cards and car payments, the Bhutanese family is almost certainly debt free. They grow most of their own food and live in a house that they built themselves.

Other factors that need to be considered are nutritional quality of the food, seasonal availability, and the relative affluence of the families in the photos compared to people in the country as a whole. When you start trying to juggle all these factors, you quickly realize that we are comparing apples to oranges. Reducing the eating habits of a single family down to a dollar figure and then comparing it across countries is really bad statistical method. I’m sure the book didn’t do that. But forwarded emails have a way of over-simplifying complex topics.

When I look at the photos of the families being compared there is a clear indicator that speaks far louder than the dollar amount: packaging. The families from the developed countries are standing behind a huge pile of boxes and bottles and cans. The families from developing countries on the other hand are gathered around piles of grains, leafy vegetables and fresh fruit.

This is one more example of how exporting affluence will not necessarily result in an improved life-style. Are the people in the developed world really better off when both spouses must commute to work away from home and rush home late in the evening to provide their children with packaged food?

I don’t want to minimize the reality of poverty in the developing world. But let’s not confuse materialism with prosperity. And let’s not compare apples to oranges when we’re trying to solve the world’s problems.

HT: Everybody Go To via Simply Missional via Think Christian

Note: I’m not linking to Everybody Go To because of racist comments on that page and because of the copyright violation of Peter Menzel’s work. I’m sure Hungry Planet would be fascinating reading. You can order it here.