Source page: McKinsey & Company
Commentary
How do we ketchup?
Food | Sustainability
January 9, 2023 – Looking at the journey of tomatoes in developed countries reveals some grim data. Out of every 100 tomatoes, only 59 to 72 make it to a store shelf, report senior partners Clarisse Magnin and Björn Timelin and coauthors. In the developing world, the numbers are grimmer: only 35 to 58 make it to the store. Click through the interactive to see more about tomatoes’ journey.
To read the article, see “Reducing food loss: What grocery retailers and manufacturers can do,” September 7, 2022.
Interactive
customizer here
Visual form
Food-loss journey chart.
Layout / body structure
The chart is built as a click-through journey of the tomato supply chain, so the reader moves stage by stage from production toward the store shelf. The structure is sequential, with each stage of the trip functioning as a panel in the overall loss story.
What is being compared
It compares how much of the original tomato harvest survives each step of the supply chain in developed and developing markets, with the goal of showing where food loss accumulates.
Measurement system
The main unit is the share of the original tomatoes that make it through the chain, so the reader is tracking retained volume as a percentage or count out of each 100 tomatoes.
Visible structure inside the graphic
The visual is organized as a supply-chain path with stage-by-stage handoffs, and each stage shows what remains versus what is lost before the next transfer. The internal structure is therefore sequential rather than axis based, with each supply-chain segment acting like its own comparison node.
Main takeaway from the visual
The shows that food loss is cumulative and much more severe in the developing-world comparison. The farther the tomatoes travel through the chain, the more the gap opens between better-performing systems and weaker ones.
Key standout values or extremes
The page highlights that in developed countries only about 59 to 72 tomatoes out of every 100 make it to a store shelf, while in the developing world only about 35 to 58 do. That range is the clearest quantitative spine of the visual.
Controls / sequence, when applicable
This page is built around a click-through sequence, so the reader can move through the tomato journey stage by stage instead of absorbing the whole comparison in one fixed frame.
Companion media, when applicable
There is no separate companion audio or video; the chart is the full visual on this page.