How Much Do We Spend on Food?

 

On Thursday, July 6, 2023, I wrote an article that most of us are carrying unnecessary burdens in our short life, and that the only thing we actually need is food. None, absolutely none of any other items we acquired in life, contribute towards a single beat to our hearts, nor do they add a single breath to our lungs, and yet we take a lot of efforts to burden ourselves acquiring and possess, them only to release every atom of them on our death serving us no purpose. I explain this here:  

https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/2023/07/carrying-unnecessary-burdens-in-our.html

Today, I gave this a thought to ask ourselves how much do each of us spend for living. Before that let’s look at some statistics on household expenditure each Malaysian spends:

 Here is one randomly searched from Google. It is an unofficial claim of course.

 

"Malaysian households spend around RM 783 per month on food alone in 2019, encompassing 17.3% of total spending. Take note of all the meat, rice and coffee you are eating and drinking, because they make up the second highest spending”.

But let’s look at some official data from the Department of Statistics Malaysia

https://www.dosm.gov.my/portal-main/release-content/household-expenditure-survey-report-2019

Here we have a more detailed breakdown on household expenditures.

Since food is the most important item for our existence, how much do we spend on it compared to our other non-food expenditure per month? Of course, this depends on our income, lifestyle, taste for food, age, gender, state of health attitudes, beliefs, knowledge about food, accessibility and food availability, time constraints, work commitments, taste and palatability, social class and economic, affordability, companion we associate ourselves with, besides biological determinants such as hunger, appetite, and taste, satiety, stress, belief systems, religious constraints, knowledge on health and nutrition, among other factors.

Gross household expenditure in surveys may not give us the exact figure on food expenditure for a single individual, since there may be many people in a household.  It may mean for a single person staying alone, a couple, a small family with one child or two children as in a nucleated family, several dozen people staying under a single roof as in extended families sharing everything together. A survey generally gives figures to cover everybody in a house who shares together. It does not individualize.

It would be better to evaluate food and other expenditures on just a couple or with just a child, and the basal figure extrapolated to the numbers in other families.  The best we can do is to conduct nation-wide surveys on tens of millions of residents across all strata of social and economic differences and take the average.   

Generally, the food expenditure for those still working, the percentage of their food expenditure seems much less compared with their other non-food expenses. This does not mean working individuals eat less or spend less on food. On the contrary, they may spend even much more as they have more income and purchasing powers. But their higher expenditures on food is nullified by their commitments to pay and maintain other non-food expenditures such as car loan, housing loan, insurance, bank loan repayment, medical insurance, eating out, petrol for commuting for work, rentals, overhead and maintenance charges among other items they fancy are necessary.

Then if they have young children, they need to pay for their education and other maintenance such as clothes, gadgets they like such as smartphones, hobbies, etc, etc, making their food budget in percentage seems so much less than they actually spend.

For example, a retiree staying at home may spend say, RM 1,500 per month against his other less requirements or none at all, such as car, housing, and bank payments, or take out some kind of insurance or spend on unnecessary investments in old age.

Perhaps a retiree needs only pay another RM 500 for water, electricity, gas, toothbrush, toothpaste and soaps to bathe and wash his clothes. Hence his expenditure per month is only RM 2,000, and if translated, his food expenditure works out to be 75 % of the total that only looks high in comparison.

Compare the same food expenditure of RM 1,500 for someone in working life who needs to spend another RM 3,500 on all sorts of other expenditures such as housing and car loans…etc as already mentioned. For that working individual his food expenditure is 30 % compared to a retiree at 75 %. But both are spending exactly the same amount for food as their actual only requirements for the sustenance of life heart beats.

The retirees generally don’t spend on any other entertainment except watching television or reading a book in the comfort of his home. Nor does he need any kind of transportation for work. Most of them don’t even want to keep any car anymore for unnecessary maintenance or to collect car iron rust and dust from the air. They may not wish to drive anymore. If they need to go out occasionally, they merely take public transport. This drastically cuts down on all non-essential, and non-food items that do not support one iota of their breath or bring them any happiness.

My food expenditure for me and my wife amounts only to between 28.4 % to 40 % of our total expenditures, but in May this year (2023), our food expenditure went up to as high as 74. 9 % compared with other household expenses such as paying for Astro paid television, Unfi TV, water, electricity, gas, petrol, kitchen wares, soap and detergents and sometimes we go on short trips for the day to other towns. 

What and how we spend on food depends on what we eat. If we feast on fantastic huge crabs, big lobsters and exotic foods 3 times a day every day, our food budget can climb to 90 to 95 % of the total expenditures. Is this necessary, and for health reasons please DO NOT indulge in excessive eating.

 The less we eat, the longer our disease-free longevity. See my explanation on caloric restriction and longevity under this article:

“Which is the Most Challenging Field in Medicine and Health Care?” published in this blog on Thursday, June 29, 2023

Scroll right down the above article till you find the passage on caloric restriction and longevity here:  

 https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/search?q=caloric+restriction

Also, under this article:

Scroll right down for the slideshow on why we must grow old and die:

https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/search?q=why+we+must+die

It was placed in the link at the bottom of the article “Did Queen Elizabeth II of England die of Old Age?”

If the links keep springing back to the same or another article, then type the title of the search in the internal search slot on the top left hand of the blog.  

I believe for young working people because of their luxurious and unhealthy lifestyle of overindulgence in order to be "comfortable" their income needs to be over RM 6,500 per month in order “to survive” only for them. Fortunately, God gave us and all living creatures only free air, water and food to survive. Some microorganisms are anaerobic, and they don’t even need oxygen in the air to survive.

As far as I am concerned, I am more than comfortable with less than RM 4,000 per month for 2 of us with left over to save too.