Sometimes graphics speak louder than words.

Ever looked around your adopted community and wondered how much families spend on dining out vs. grocery shopping? Campus Kitchens look at factors like these weekly as they decide who to serve, what’s on the menu, and how to infuse a meal drop off with nutrition.

Recently, Flowingdata.com, a web site that translates social questions into easy to digest answers, released a statistical visualization poster titled “What America spends on Food and Drink.” The graphic breaks down spending for large cities for dining out (restaurants and carryout) and groceries, while making the text bubbles larger or smaller based on population size.

The numbers give Campus Kitchens some healthy insight into how their communities are eating, whether they enjoy their food in raw or prepared form, and where some of the greatest fresh food access issues are.

While numbers indicate Austin as spending the most per year on food, Atlanta spends the highest percentage while dining out, and Detroit – in connection with recent economic hardships – is spending the least.

The University of Detroit Mercy also happens to be a possible site for a Campus Kitchen opening, which would help alleviate some of that need. Other Campus Kitchen cities profiled by this graphic include (in declining order from how much they spend): Washington, D.C., Boston, New Orleans (future site), St. Louis, New York, Chicago, and Baltimore.

Based on recent U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics (April 2010), however, this graphic presents another concerning issue for hunger relief advocates like Campus Kitchens. The April assessment shows that for a 12-month period, food for an average family of four on a thrifty spending plan could cost upwards of 7,000 dollars. The graphic shows only about half of the major cities actually spend this amount, and many, like New York, Chicago, Baltimore, and Detroit, fall below that mark. Is this a good indicator of how much hunger relief is needed in each of these cities? Is there a way to level things out?

Just some food for thought.

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