Friday, May 09, 2008

Food Expenditures

John Phipps links to the NYTimes graphic on living expenses (which I'd read on paper, but it's a whole lot neater on line) as a great example of presentation of complex data.

What's interesting is looking at food expenditures, which are 15 percent of total. But when you mouse around the expenditures for various foods, it looks as if we're eating pretty sensibly at home. I mean snacks, misc. foods, and frozen foods together are about 1 percent of total or about 6.5 percent of food costs. That's not too bad. Vegans will have problems with all the money spent on meat (close to 2 percent). Fruits and vegetables seem to be about 1 percent of total. Dairy about 1 percent. Alcohol a little over 1 percent. Eating out about 6 percent. Coffee, tea, other drinks about 1 percent.

A little noted item--domestic service is .2 percent. Remember in the good old pre-WWI and WWII days, everyone (i.e., upper middle class and upper) had servants; now they have permanent press and fast foods.

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