King Size M&Ms, or I Can't Believe How Rich I Am

Sometimes I pop into a store and buy a King Size bag of Peanut M&Ms. Calling a little 3.27 ounce handful of candy that fits in the palm of your hand "King Size" seems an insult to royalty everywhere, and I'm really surprised some monarch hasn't declared war, or at least filed a slander lawsuit, against the makers of M&Ms. Perhaps the world is starting to learn to live together.

I usually buy these M&Ms when I'm feeling a little hungry, something to tide me over between lunch and dinner. Sometimes I buy them even when I'm not feeling so much hungry as anxious or angst-ridden, and just feel the need to chew something or give myself a sugar rush. I scarf the little brightly colored spheres down half-consciously, and they usually are gone within a few minutes.

We all do this on occasion. Millions of these little snacks are consumed every day, tiny financial and caloric transactions that are barely a blip on our budgets or our diets. Sometimes, however, I think it's important to put these snacks into a broader context.

I customarily spend 99 cents on my bag of Peanut M&Ms. Around the world, there are an estimated 1.3 billion people who struggle to live on earnings of one dollar or less per day.

That bag of Peanut M&Ms that I treat as a little snack has 480 calories. That represents approximately one quarter of the minimum daily recommended caloric intake for an active adult. Yet there are billions of people around the world who suffer from malnutrition, who can't get 2000 calories worth of food per day. For the most serious cases of starvation, even that 480 calories is but a dream.

In other words, what to me is a little between-meal snack, purchased with pocket change and consumed almost without thinking, represents every bit of money and every bit of food that well over a billion people around the world have to live on. Yes, I may be struggling with a credit card debt that now stands at $25,059.51, and within the United States my earnings are well towards the lower end of the scale, but relatively speaking within the entire spectrum of human experience, I am extraordinarily wealthy.