Friday, January 08, 2010

Who Spends More Time Preparing Food?

This was interesting...

The USDA publishes a magazine on issues related to farming and food called Amber Waves. From the latest issue:

*SNAP is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. It used to be called the Food Stamp program.

The graph shows:
  • People in lower-income households, whether they receive food stamps or not, spend more time preparing food than people in higher income households.
  • People in lower-income households, whether they receive food stamps or not, spend less time eating and drinking than people in higher income households.1
  • All groups spent about the same amount of time grocery shopping.
Final observation ... Everyone spent on average 2 hours a day in procuring food, preparing food, eating, and cleaning up.

How many hours do you spend?
________
1 The eating and drinking category refers "to those occasions where food consumption was reported as the “primary” or main activity," say, mealtimes.

5 comments:

Michelle @ Find Your Balance said...

Oh boy, I probably spend more time than most. It's one of my favorite things about working from home. Including shopping and cleaning up? That's a lot of hours. But I think it's worth the effort.

Maria Verivaki said...

i spend a LOT of my time on most days doing something with food - i know it's worth it, but it does tire me out

Bix said...

Both of you are people I would want to find myself shipwrecked with :)

Some people I mention 2 hours to think that's insanely long. But those jobs are getting done in a household - buying food (or growing it), prep, clean-up. I'll bet the person doing those jobs spends more than 2 hours a day feeding everyone. (Since this is an average.) I mean, that's 30+ minutes prep/cook/eat/cleanup per meal not including going to the store to get it? It tires me out too.

Bix said...

I meant to say - at least 30 minutes - which to me is insanely short.

Unknown said...

a pressure cooker helps cuts spending time in the kitchen. And dividing kitchen chores is a great gift that a spouse can share than a great birthday gift ! ...