Consumption
In most parts of the world, sugar is an important part of the human diet, making food more palatable and providing food energy. After cereals and vegetable oils, sugar derived from sugar cane and beet provided more kilocalories per capita per day on average than other food groups. According to the FAO, an average of 24 kilograms (53 lb) of sugar, equivalent to over 260 food calories per day, was consumed annually per person of all ages in the world in 1999. Even with rising human populations, sugar consumption is expected to increase to 25.1 kilograms (55 lb) per person per year by 2015.
Data collected in multiple nationwide surveys between 1999 and 2008 show that the intake of added sugars has declined by 23.4 percent with declines occurring in all age, ethnic and income groups.
| Country | 2007/08 | 2008/09 | 2009/10 | 2010/11 | 2011/12 | 2012/13 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| India | 22,021 | 23,500 | 22,500 | 23,500 | 25,500 | 26,500 |
| European Union | 16,496 | 16,760 | 17,400 | 17,800 | 17,800 | 17,800 |
| China | 14,250 | 14,500 | 14,300 | 14,000 | 14,400 | 14,900 |
| Brazil | 11,400 | 11,650 | 11,800 | 12,000 | 11,500 | 11,700 |
| United States | 9,590 | 9,473 | 9,861 | 10,086 | 10,251 | 10,364 |
| Other | 77,098 | 76,604 | 77,915 | 78,717 | 80,751 | 81,750 |
| Total | 150,855 | 152,487 | 153,776 | 156,103 | 160,202 | 163,014 |
The per capita consumption of refined sugar in the United States has varied between 27 and 46 kilograms (60 and 100 lb) in the last 40 years. In 2008, American per capita total consumption of sugar and sweeteners, exclusive of artificial sweeteners, equalled 61.9 kilograms (136 lb) per year. This consisted of 29.65 kg (65.4 lb) pounds of refined sugar and 31 kg (68.3 lb) pounds of corn-derived sweeteners per person.
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Famous quotes containing the word consumption:
“The basis on which good repute in any highly organized industrial community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength; and the means of showing pecuniary strength, and so of gaining or retaining a good name, are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods.”
—Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929)
“So it is with books, for the most part: they work no redemption on us. The bookseller might certainly know that his customers are in no respect better for the purchase and consumption of his wares. The volume is dear at a dollar, and after to reading to weariness the lettered backs, we leave the shop with a sigh, and learn, as I did without surprise of a surly bank director, that in bank parlors they estimate all stocks of this kind as rubbish.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Tourism, human circulation considered as consumption ... is fundamentally nothing more than the leisure of going to see what has become banal.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)