What countries spend the most on meals?

The residents of France, Greece, Italy and Spain, in this order, spend the most time on food and drink on average.

This is revealed by figures from the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) on the amount of time that the citizens of different countries spend on different daily activities.

The French spend an average of 2 hours and 13 minutes per day (133 minutes) on food on drink, two minutes more than the Greeks (131 minutes), who come in second in this ranking.

Immediately thereafter, almost tied, are the Italians, with 2 hours and 7 minutes on average, and the Spaniards, with one minute less.

In fifth place in this ranking is Denmark: the Danes also take their time eating, almost two and a half hours per day (119 minutes). They thus beat even a southern European country, Portugal, where the average amount of time spent on food and drink is slightly under two hours (112 minutes).

Far from Europe, the other OECD country whose inhabitants spend more than 100 minutes of their time each day eating and drinking is South Korea (105 minutes).

The average in the 28 OECD countries is 95 minutes per day. This is also the amount of time that the Germans spend eating and drinking.

So, what are the countries that spend the least amount of time on meals? The quickest ones are the inhabitants of the United States, who spend barely over an hour (62 minutes). Their northern neighbours, the Canadians, also rush through their meals: the daily average is just 1 hour and five minutes.

And now back in Europe, the Dutch are the third quickest eaters, spending just 66 minutes per day on meals.

The ranking below shows the complete list of the OECD countries (with the exception of Turkey and Hungary, for which there are no specific figures on this activity).