What's the world eating? Calorie purchases to increase by 90 cal/day by 2019

The world buys 1.5 trillion food and beverage calories each day, and each day the average consumer purchases 756 calories’ worth of packaged food and soft drinks, new research from Euromonitor International has revealed. And these figures are set to increase by 2019.

To put that into context, the recommended calorie intake per person is 2000 calories per day. As is to be expected, consumers in developed countries purchase more calories per day than those in developing countries: North American and Western European consumers purchase more than 1500 calories each day, while Indian and Chinese consumers purchase 150 and 510 calories per day respectively.

“Despite over 40% of the global population being overweight and obese, our nutrition data shows that by 2019 the world will purchase 90 calories more a day,” said Lauren Bandy, nutrition analyst at Euromonitor International.

“This analysis helps address rising concerns surrounding nutritional value in food while building a picture of what people eat in different countries.”

Surprisingly, Mexican consumers purchase more calories per day than those in the US: 1928 in Mexico compared to 1548 in the US. These extra 380 calories are the equivalent of an extra slice of pizza each day. German consumers purchase nearly twice as much fat per person per day than Japanese consumers, and French consumers buy more calories in bread alone than Indian consumers buy in packaged food and soft drinks combined.

“Understanding how packaged food and soft drink brands contribute to the total purchase of nutrients by category and country helps address the rising concern of nutritional value in food,” said Bandy.

Euromonitor has tracked energy, fat, saturated fat, carbohydrates, sugar, salt, protein and fibre in 54 countries. The data is available in the research company’s Passport: Nutrition database.