The bar charts illustrate the proportions of food and goods purchased from supermarkets in three European countries in 1998 and 2008.
What is immediately noticeable is that there were increases in both categories in all three countries, albeit to varying degrees. Also, by 2008, country A had replaced country B as having the highest consumption levels of both food and goods, while country C was home to the smallest figures in both years.
Looking first at country A, in 1998, around 10% of the food in the supermarkets was sold, and this was more than double the figure for purchased goods. However, there were notable increases in both categories, with the percentage of purchased food rising by more than three times to 35%, and that of goods increasing tenfold to reach 39%. This meant that country A had far higher levels of consumption than other countries in 2008.
By contrast, country B originally had the highest proportions of purchased food and goods, with both standing at around a quarter. Nonetheless, the figures in this country only rose marginally, reaching 28% and 26% for the sold food and goods. While country C partially shared this degree of increasing in its percentage of food, which rose from 6% to 8%, the proportion of goods that were sold increased far more significantly, by fourteen times, from 1% to 14%.