Source page: McKinsey & Company
Commentary
What do 6 Tyrannosaurus Rex and asparagus have in common?
Sustainability
April 15, 2021 – The dinosaurs weighed 58 tons—and that’s also how much asparagus gets thrown out each day in the US. In our interactive exploration of food waste, we’ve also paired mushrooms with blue whales and brussels sprouts with hippos—all in the name of bringing attention to how much food is lost or wasted every year across the globe.
To explore the interactive, see “McKinsey for Kids: (Food) waste not, want not,” March 23, 2021.
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Visual form
Multi-card image sequence.
Layout / body structure
The visual is a card-style step-through sequence titled around ten foods kids claim they hate. Each card centers one food inside a framed panel, keeps the neighboring foods ghosted at the left and right edges, prints the daily discarded tonnage in large type, and then uses a large blue silhouette comparison across the lower half of the card.
What is being compared
It compares the average daily tonnage of disliked foods thrown out in the United States with familiar animals, vehicles, structures, or machines of comparable weight. Across the saved sequence, the foods include asparagus, bell peppers, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, eggplant, fish, mushrooms, onions, and tomatoes.
Measurement system
The core measure is tons thrown out on an average day in the US. Each card prints one tonnage figure as the anchor and then translates that weight into an analogy count or one-to-one object comparison such as dinosaurs, airplanes, hippos, space shuttles, a shark, the International Space Station, blue whales, the Statue of Liberty framework, or locomotives.
Visible structure inside the graphic
Every card repeats the same anatomy: title at the top, side previews of adjacent foods, the selected food highlighted in the middle, a large tonnage number, a short explanatory sentence, and a bright blue comparison silhouette filling the lower panel. Because the structure stays fixed while the analogy changes from card to card, the reader can focus on how the weight examples escalate and shift across the sequence.
Main takeaway from the visual
The sequence turns food waste tonnage into memorable physical analogies so the scale feels concrete rather than abstract. Even foods that seem minor on their own are shown as adding up to extremely large daily discarded weights once they are translated into dinosaurs, trucks, aircraft, whales, or locomotives.
Key standout values or extremes
The saved cards show asparagus at 58 tons, about the same as 6 adult Tyrannosaurus Rex; bell peppers at 1,332 tons, equal to about 15 average airplanes; broccoli at 173 tons, enough to fill 14 large garbage trucks; brussels sprouts at 35 tons, about 9 male hippos; cabbage at 485 tons, about 5 empty space shuttles; eggplant at 60 tons, around one Megalodon shark; fish at 1,025 tons, about 2 International Space Stations; mushrooms at 198 tons, roughly 2 blue whales; onions at 3,130 tons, about 12 times the Statue of Liberty’s framework; and tomatoes at 425 tons, about 2 diesel railway locomotives.
Controls / sequence, when applicable
The visible controls change the chart view while keeping the same graphic structure.
Companion media, when applicable
There is no separate companion audio or video; the chart is the full visual on this page.