Study charts where each part of the world gets and sends its food

The ingredients that make up any home cooked meal could have traveled thousands of miles from all corners of the world to reach the dinner table, Michele Debczak reports for Mental Floss. The International Center for Tropical Agriculture has released a study that tracks the travels of where the world's produce is sent, separated into categories for calories, protein, fat, food weight, production quantity, harvested area and production value.

"For current food supplies and production systems, we analyzed data for each crop commodity per country per measurement over the most recent three years for which sufficient data were available (2009-2011)," states the report. "All (177) countries consistently reported during the time period were included for food supplies variables, as well as for production quantity and harvested area (covering 98.5 percent of the world’s population. All (141) countries reported for production value were included, covering 94.1 percent of the world’s population." (The plot on the left only shows the most significant contributions (those in the 95 percentile) while the one on the right includes everything)

"For the analysis of change in dependence over time, food supplies data were assessed for each year from 1961-2009, and production systems from 1961-2011, utilizing the full set of commodity and country listings, standardized across all years," states the report. "The resulting 152 comparable countries treated in food supplies data comprised 98 percent of the world’s population across the study period. The 182 comparable countries covered in production quantity and harvested area data comprised 99.7 percent of the global population, and the 115 countries covered in production value data covered 88.5 percent. (For all the study's graphics, click here)