[hugh3]

It's not hard to reach, but as an average over the entire population?

Is there any explanation of the methodology by which these numbers were derived? I don't think it's possible to accurately measure this kind of thing -- heck, I have enough trouble keeping track of how many calories I, personally, am consuming, so I have no idea how you could average it over the entire population. You could measure food production, but we don't know exactly how much is wasted.

[ori_b]

I don't understand why this is being downvoted. I also would like to see how they arrive at these numbers, because while they don't seem like they'd be insane, they do seem somewhat high to me.

It seems plausible to me that they don't count waste.

[ori_b]

I don't understand why this is being downvoted. I really would like to see how they arrive at these numbers.

[mikecp]

And I don't understand why you couldn't have clicked the "sources" link yourself and found this, but okay: http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/ess/documents/food_se...

[hugh3]

Warning: that link is an Excel spreadsheet.

I do note, however, that:

a) It still doesn't say precisely how food consumption is estimated.

b) However it does say this: "The food consumption refers to the amount of food available for human consumption as estimated by the FAO Food Balance Sheets. However the actual food consumption may be lower than the quantity shown as food availability depending on the magnitude of wastage and losses of food in the household, e.g. during storage, in preparation and cooking, as plate-waste or quantities fed to domestic animals and pets, thrown or given away."

-- which explains the implausibly high numbers for some of the western countries; not every calorie bought is a calorie consumed (I know a lot of my food goes off before I get a chance to eat it).