The Nations Weekly Food Consumption

A new survey has been released by the Daily Mail, about the global food shopping habits of different nations. The research was made by Peter Menzel and will serve as a subject of his new book The Hungry Planet.
The writer and his wife visited thirteen families from twenty four countries around the world and asked them about their weekly food purchasing habits. 
The infographic below will summarise the nations weekly food consumption emphasising the differences between price, quantity and quality.
The infographic is divided into two main parts. The first part is visualising families weekly purchase cost range which is between 320£ - 103£ in case of the affluent families and 99£ - 3.20£ in case of less affluent families. It is followed by the affluent and the less affluent families weekly food consumption, then I focused on the quantity and quality differences.

I’m looking forward to read the book in order to find out more details about the families interviewed by the Menzel’s.


Summary:
Affluent families tend to spend more money on sweets, fast foods, takeaways rather than on fruits and vegetables. These meals are less healthy due to the lack of vitamins and fibre, and may seem to be more expensive than healthy foods. Less affluent families eat cheaper but healthier foods. Their weekly meals contain foods rich in fibre and vitamins such as: fresh fruits, vegetables, rice, baked goods, etc. In the meantime, there is no data available about why is their food cheaper or why are they spending less money on weekly groceries. It’s highly likely that they cannot afford more. We may also assume that there are families growing their own fresh vegetable and fruits and because of that they spend less money on grocery purchases, while city residents cannot, mostly due to the lack of vegetable gardening space and not just. Hopefully more details about these families will be published later in the book by Peter Menzel and his wife Faith D'Aluisio.

Click here to enlarge the infographic.

Please note, the information shown on the infographic were gathered only from the Daily Mail website. 
Click here to see the outstanding photos taken by Peter Menzel showing families’ weekly purchases.

Eco-friendly way of cleaning silver

A good start for my first week money-saving challenge: Cleaning Silver with Household Products

Silver is one of my favourite precious metals. I found it more elegant and fashionable than any other jewelries. Unfortunately it is more fragile than its fellow metals. Neglected silver jewelries can get tarnished and may even stain your clothes.

Tarnished silver jewellery before cleaning

There are many ways to get them shiny again. You can take them to a jewelry expert or look up for silverware cleaning and polishing creams in homeware stores and jewelry shops. Choosing the frugal way of cleaning silver jewelry will leave the money in your pocket. 
Why should you pay for it when you can achieve the goal with a simple, cheap and eco-friendly method?

Here it goes!

Accessories:

• A glass bowl or a dish
•  Aluminum foil
• Boiled water
• 2-3 tablespoon baking soda
• 1 tablespoon salt (sea salt or iodized salt) 
 

Cleaning process
Cover the inner surface of the glass dish with the aluminum foil. Place the silver items into the dish then sprinkle the baking soda and the salt on them. Pour the boiled water on the sprinkled silver items. The items should be fully submerged in the solution. If you can smell the penetrating odour of the sulphur, then you will know that you are on the right way.

Depending on how badly the silver is tarnished the cleaning process should take between 20-50 minutes. My jewelleries were badly tarnished, so I left them for 50 minutes.

After the silver becomes brighter place them on a clean fabric. Don’t wait until they dry start scrubbing them with the clean, soft fabric or you may use a soft toothbrush as well.

This cleaning process can also be used for larger silver items like tableware, candle holders, jewellery, etc.

Voilá!

Silver jewellery after cleaning

Good to know!
For my experiment I used 925 sterling silver
If you have larger silver items I recommend you to use a larger bowl, because the reaction will only be successful if the silver gets in contact with the aluminum foil.
Don’t wear them while you are washing the dishes, having a bath, or getting in contact with mineral water.
Silver jewelries with stones should be handled with care. Use a waterproof plaster in order to protect the stones, then you may place them in the solution.
Never put your silver tablewares into the dishwasher.
If the water is warm the cleaning process will be faster.

Storing Silver
Store the silver in a well sealed box free of excess moisture and chemicals. Place moisture-absorbent near the silver wares, for instance silica gel packets. You can purchase it in most of the pharmacies.

Cleaning silver with baking soda instead of using industrial compounds is not just cheaper but eco-friendly as well. 
Plus, I’m sure all of you have the necessary accessories in your homes.
How about you? How do you clean your silverware? 

Let me know :)