On average, Americans spend less on food, tobacco, and alcohol than 18 other nationalities — despite our comparably high incomes.
According to analysis over at the Huffington Post, Americans spent about $85 per week on food, tobacco, and alcohol. We each spend about $12.50 of that on fast food — almost half our restaurant budget and more that any other nation.
Fast food is cheap food at its finest, and it is often pointed to as a poverty-related problem. That fact shouldn’t be discounted. Some 46.2 million Americans live below the poverty line, 15 percent of our population and a bigger proportion than many other industrialized countries.
We do not, however, have a bigger poverty problem (by percent) than Spain, Greece, or Belgium, for example. Denizens of those nations spend more on food, tobacco, and alcohol than we do.
In other words, America’s poverty rate might drive its average spending down, but it doesn’t fully account for it.
One thing that might be worth looking at, though, is what cheap food means. Americans eat about one-sixth of the world’s meat each year, according to the U.S. census bureau, even though they make up about one-twentieth of the world’s population.
It is relatively cheap to produce and transport meat in the U.S. Between 1995 to 2010, roughly two-thirds of U.S. farm subsidies — or $133 billion — went toward animal-feed crops, tobacco, and cotton, according to the Washington Post.
Meat takes more water and energy to produce than other protein sources, which makes it a poor choice for sustainable agriculture. Unfortunately, the cost isn’t being passed on to the consumer here.
