How much food does Singapore eat?

How many meals has Singapore consumed in its 60 years of independence? And how many meals will it continue to consume in the next 60 years?

60 years is an amazing milestone, and it gives us the chance to both reflect on the past, and dream for the future.

As a business that thinks a lot about sustainability, we tend to also think about the future (a lot).

So I was thinking…

Looking Backwards

Let’s get some foundational numbers together.

In 1965 the citizen population of Singapore was 1.8m, and today, if we only consider Singapore citizens, the population is now around 5.7m.

If you take the difference between now and then, and divide it by 60 years you can get a rough idea of annual population growth.

We want to then assume everyone eats 3 meals a day.

These inputs bring us to an approximation of 200 billion meals over the last 60 years. That's 200,000,000,000.

Looking Forwards

If Singapore grows to a maximum citizen population of 8 million in the coming 60 years, then by 2085 we'll consume another 415 billion meals.

That’s more than twice as many as what’s gone before.

If all we did for these meals was eat the national dish, Chicken Rice, we'd need approximately 100 billion chickens. Which across 8m people, is 12,500 chickens each.

This gives us a feel for the size of what the future consumption could look like.

Finally, what happens if every year, we eat 1% less chicken (say substituting it for a vegan/vegetarian option like cai fan) versus the current projection.

In that world (a 1% reduction compounding every year) we would consume ¼ less of the total chicken, bringing the total to a reduced, but still large, 75 billion.

If that annual reduction changed to 2%, 5%, or 10%, we would reduce the total consumption by 40%, 66% and 83% respectively.

Small steps for big change

Big changes in a short period of time can be great, but so can small changes over a long period of time.

We talk about food as a food business, but these concepts can be applied to multiple ideas, like what if every year we exercise 1% more, walk 1% further, save 1% more.

Hope you all enjoy the weekend’s festivities!

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