Romanians increased their consumption of margarine, vegetable oils, pork and beef, potatoes and rice. According to data released by the INS, consumption of sugar and sugary products has remained about the same despite warnings from nutritionists.

If we look at what is happening in the world, we see that East and Southeast Asia are leading the way in changing food habits, increasing the amount of animal calories consumed more than 10-fold in less than 50 years.

Let’s go a little further. Solar energy is mainly accumulated by plants. Humans and animals raised by humans are consumed annually 40 percent of this energy stored mainly in cereals. The article I just linked to talks about how the intensive exploitation of cereal crops leads to soil erosion and reduced soil productivity. And then humanity went to the next level: it invented oil-based agricultural fertilizers.

For every vegetable calorie, you need at least 3 calories of oil. But more importantly, for every animal calorie you need about 10 plant calories. From here.

Population growth and changing food habits now cost 70 times more oil than in the 1960s. And that’s not all.

Globalization has normalized the appearance of almost any product in almost any part of the world. One calorie of lettuce transported from Great Britain to the United States used 127 calories from oil.

Intensive agriculture leads to soil erosion, and 100,000 square kilometers of arable land is lost annually. About as much as Romania has.

And when the weather is not on our side or when oil prices rise, so do food prices.

Read the statistics here.