>Is this a common state of affairs? Who doesn't have at least a week's supply of food
On the morning of the grocery shopping day, I'd guess most families do not have 7 days of food left to eat.
In America, the average # of grocery trips per week was ~2.[1]
That frequency doesn't seem so strange if the number of trips is affected by: (1) family size such as 4 people including 2 parents + 2 children, (2) refrigerator size of typically less than 20 cu ft (not the luxury 28+ cu ft or extra refrigerator in the garage), and (3) preference for fresh & perishable food instead of canned items.
Yeah my dude, I'd almost venture to say that you are the outlier here (echo/bubbles, yay!). For many that I know, food is an on-demand lazy loaded resource. Sure, sometimes they buy groceries (usually when they run out of pop-tarts) ... But the odd day when they actually cook dinner, it's a trip to the store for just those ingredients that are necessary.
Is it horribly wasteful and inefficient? yes. Does that get factored into the equation? no.
Efficiency aside, that feels like awful planning to me. Growing up in the Bay Area, the threat of a significant earthquake has been ever-present. My family always had several dozen bottles of water and a reasonable amount of canned/jarred/dried food around.
Living alone and sick, I don't want to cook. I want cereal, orange juice, ice cream, easy to prepare food, etc. These are the sorts of things I don't normally have around.
My emergency supplies have food, but I don't eat the emergency food unless there is an emergency.
Hell, the 5 cases of Soylent would last a long time, not to mention a fridge and pantry full of food. Maybe not stuff I want to eat, but they're calories in a pinch.
I suppose if you take it literally, this isn't too common a thing. Having a week's supply of _food_ is easy, but if you want to have a weeks supply of _meals_ that's a different situation.
There's a difference between literally no food at home and no fresh food. You could of course eat a can of beans that has been sitting there since Obama was in office, but you'd really rather a fresh meal.
On the morning of the grocery shopping day, I'd guess most families do not have 7 days of food left to eat.
In America, the average # of grocery trips per week was ~2.[1]
That frequency doesn't seem so strange if the number of trips is affected by: (1) family size such as 4 people including 2 parents + 2 children, (2) refrigerator size of typically less than 20 cu ft (not the luxury 28+ cu ft or extra refrigerator in the garage), and (3) preference for fresh & perishable food instead of canned items.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/251728/weekly-number-of-...