Visual Economics shows statistics on average food consumption in America:
My brief feedback is that water is confounded with these results. They should have subtracted water content from the weight of all dietary items, as it inflates the proportion of milk, vegetable and fruit items that contain more water. They did that for soda (which is represented as sugar/corn syrup), amplifying the inconsistency.
Time Magazine had a beautiful gallery that visualizes diets around the world in a more appealing way.
Agreed. Water should either be in it's own category or taken out completely. Good catch.
I think it's best if this sort of graph is followed up with a more informative set of dot and line plots. Ideally, you'd click on the pretty image and you'd get the statistical graphs that show the information clearly. I think this works better than trying to cleverly squeeze lots of information onto a pretty graphic.
P.S. I agree that the Time magazine gallery is beautiful, but some of the gains are removed because you can only click through the slides one at a time. So it's difficult to make comparisons. What they really need is a single image showing all sixteen photos.
Well, sort of. How you compare different kinds of foods is ultimately a matter of the purpose. Measuring them by calories seems logical to me, but I'm not sure celery should simply not count. In a lot contexts, measuring them by price might make sense. If the intent here is to make people say, "hey, that's a lot of food" — which is my best guess — then leaving in water serves that purpose. (I do have trouble reconciling leaving it out for some categories but not others.)
Celery should definitely count.
Is it literally all Americans and not just adult Americans? (The age given suggests all rather then adult.)
That would explain the vast quantities of dairy products consumed e.g. baby/infant/toddler formula.
(But I agree they should have measured dry weight rather than wet weight).
I think the whole chart is somewhat misleading. I know it is "kiss", but there is no real indication of demographics, and I don't believe the amount of fruits and vegetables they are showing is really that much a part of the diet of people in the U.S.