This link was in my twitter stream What the World eats – a photo essay by Time (love Time btw) and I found it fascinating for a lot of reasons.

The amount of packaged foods that are being consumed globally is quite staggering and frightening to me.  The amount of fresh foods in the weekly groceries can almost be equated to the national obesity statistics.

Interestingly, our weekly grocery bills are pretty similar for families, although in some countries the dollar definitely stretches further.

I’m still interested in childhood obesity and will again publish a series of articles on it, and having taken a snapshot look at the diets of some of the westernised countries, it’s easy to see why this problem is not going to go away.

With both parents working just to maintain a roof over the family’s head (so to speak) it’s easy to see why packaged food is so attractive.  Given my own circumstances (widow with three kids working full time) I”m also tempted to just grab some frozen crumbed unrecognizables to throw into the oven at the end of a hard day.  The only thing stopping me from doing so at the moment is that the freezer is broken!

It’s hard, no matter how many cooking shows you watch about how quick and easy it is to whip up a delicious nutritious meal for the family, to come home after a day’s work, decide what to eat, and then have the kids say they don’t want it anyway!

My compromise solution has been to have reasonably nutritious snacks available and to cut down on buying packaged food (quite easy on a single wage really because you can’t afford them anyway).

There is no easy solution to childhood obesity, but having fresh foods available has to be a start.

It’s strictly what I think anyway.