Per capita consumption of selected food items, 1980 versus 2005.
| Item
Beef (lbs) Chicken (lbs) Whole Milk (gal) Reduced Fat Milk (gal) Cheddar Cheese (lbs) Mozzarella Cheese (lbs) Swiss Cheese (lbs) Ice Cream (lbs) Flour (lbs) Corn (lbs) Coffee beans (lbs) Peanuts (lbs) |
1980
72.1 32.7 16.5 3.1 6.8 3.0 1.3 17.5 116.9 12.9 10.3 5.1 |
2005
62.4 60.4 6.6 5.6 10.1 10.2 1.2 15.4 134.1 31.4 9.5 6.6 |
Read the entire table. Quite frankly, I was surprised by most of it. Sadly, I can’t help but think, “the pizza and fried chicken lobbies must be really powerful.” A better exercise for my intro students is to compare these data with relative price (and income) data for each item. And of course, we must include non-pecuniary costs in the prices — what else could explain the decline in ice cream consumption? I am certainly not contributing to that trend 😕
Interesting, a few things I hadn’t really expected.