The other day I saw a post on Facebook pertaining to the consumption of food for a family from countries all over the globe. I studied each one of these photos with intensity. I didn’t see a credit for the photography, so I started digging. What I found was the photographer was none other than the fabulous and well known Peter Menzel. His website contains the photos as well as other photos of food around the world and so many other areas, such as earth, water, and death among other topics. Mr. Menzel’s website is well worth the time to visit, but please be warned not all images are suitable for littletons.

I also found that the photos were part of an article for Time Magazine. Thet title of the article is, “How the World Eats.” What intrigued me about the piece was the food each family purchased in relation to the number of people fed with the food. Then I looked at the cost in American dollars for each family. I considered where my family falls into this scale. While my cost for a week was far below the cost of the American family for a week, my food amount is larger. However many of the other photos depict families who are consuming for more food than our family does in a week. So, I began jotting down lists of the actual items in the pictures. I was astounded to find that our family, with no food eaten out in a week, consumes less food than many families around the world, per number of people in our household! This was astounding because I have been conditioned to think that Americans, on average, consume the most food of any peoples on the planet!

Check out the Time Magazine article and think about where your family falls into the scale of food costs on a global scale. This will be an eye opening experience.

These are my thoughts.