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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
The easiest way to compare dietary commonalities or peculiarities of individual nations is to check the food balance sheets that the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (headquartered in Rome) prepares for virtually all of the world's countries (FAO 2008). These accounts are based on the best available national statistics of food production and trade and on the estimates of plant and animal harvests diverted to animal feeding, seed and other non-food uses or lost during storage and industrial processing. Their final tallies show per capita annual consumption of individual foodstuffs (in kilograms) and daily intakes of food energy (in kilocalories) and dietary proteins and fats (both in grams). Perhaps the most obvious measure of dietary affluence is the average consumption of animal foods eaten for their special tastes and distinguished in nutritional terms particularly because of their relatively high content of perfect protein.