Week 4 : Visualizing a century of meat consumption

[Shravanthi]

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/0...aphic.html

Description :
This is an infographic visualization on increased consumption of meat in the United States over the century especially after the world war 2 with the growth of fast food industry and intensive farming methods. The other factor that contributed towards this was the adoption of modern refrigeration techniques in food storage. The dietary guidelines published by the health department also dictates the consumption measures.

Pros:
The graph narrates the story of meat consumption by documenting the events that either led to the increase or decrease very neatly.
The causal narrative is easy to understand.
I would keep the white grid lines as they give a good sense of the amount of consumption in pounds.
The color coding to highlight each of the periods like the Korean war and the vietnam war works well.

Cons:
I would add an element of interactivity to this chart and a better color palette could be more suitable.


An interesting thing to mull over would be to analyze how this contributed to national health and obesity in the US.
This visualization is taken from the link http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/0...aphic.html