Chocolate & Meat Pudding ... with extra sauce!

I was listening to the radio the other day and whilst I can't remember what in particular was being discussed, I do remember the reporter dropping in that on average the Swiss eat 11+kg of chocolate per year.

That did sound a lot so I thought I'd hunt around for some more numbers... which, as you'd expect, are a bit of a mixed (lolly?) bag.

The Swiss do seem to top most of the lists with other countries such as France, England and the USA getting a mention as consuming approximately 6kg each.

Just as a comparison, Australia (according to the SMH in 2005) consume 4.4kg pa. The same report puts the Swiss at 10.3kg pa.

To put that into perspective, a small Snickers bar weighs 60gms. So assuming that the total weight refers to the surrounding product rather than 'pure' Chocolate, that equates to the Swiss eating 183 bars a year or one every two days... !

The other thing that has always fascinated me was meat consumption. We are not vegetarians but do limit meat to once a week due to cost. I've gone 'off' poultry so this is typically beef, pork or kangaroo. On rare occassions we might eat venison, lamb or duck.

Looking at some meat* per annum numbers it also makes for disturbing reading. Just as a sample Germans eat ~82kg pa, the French ~101kg pa, the Americans ~125kg, the New Zealanders ~142kg pa and the Danish top the list with ~146kg pa. Australia, inexplicably, is missing from the data.

'Normal, healthy' consumption is approximately 1.3-1.5kg per week or 185-215gms per day**. If you were to scale those numbers up it would equate to something like 67-78kg pa.

According to the numbers above, the Danes are eating - at least! - 2.8kg per week or 400gms per day.

As you might have guessed, I have some time to kill....

* This is defined on Earth Trends as follows: Meat consumption per capita refers to the total meat retained for use in country per person per year. Total meat includes meat from animals slaughtered in countries, irrespective of their origin, and comprises horsemeat, poultry, and meat from all other domestic or wild animals such as camels, rabbits, reindeer, and game animals. It does not clarify if it's a bone-in weight.

** This number comes from the first few weeks of the CSIRO's Total Wellbeing Diet and is only the meat portion. Further to this, there is quite a bit of fish to consume, proportionally more as the diet progresses. This is an extremely popular publication arguably with some 'issues'. In particular relating to the funding partners of the project.