Food Consumption

 Whenever I go to the grocery store I am amazed at the abundance and variety of good food we have available to eat.  Just like most people I get most of my food from the store.  My garden only provides a tasty interlude.

Recently it occurred to me that it might be interesting to put food consumption in terms of my little  town with population of 5000.  My annual per capita consumption figures are from USDA in 2000.  I did the math to convert to daily consumption.  I suspect it has not changed a lot since 2000.   

It takes 2685 pounds of red meat daily to keep us fed.  That is the equivalent of approximately 5 fed steers or 20 fed hogs each day.  In addition, we eat 905 pounds of chicken per day.  That is about 200 big broilers.  We also consume 8123 pounds of milk per day.  That is about 1000 gallons.  Some of those milk products are cheese, dry milk, etc. 

Fruit and vegetables needed to keep us going is 9685 pounds.  Add 2740 pounds of cereal grain, 2080 pounds of sugars, and 1015 pounds of fat.  That is one huge amount of groceries to feed one small town in Illinois every day.