Looking for a way to celebrate World Food Day quietly, without leaving your desk and without busting your diet? Of course you are. Do you think great data, artfully presented, can be as stirring as great poetry?

Then check out What the World Eats, the interactive tour de force our graphics team has just put up on the National Geographic food hub.

It's a look at what and how much the world, and 22 countries in particular, have eaten every year from 1961 through 2011. But it's not a half-century-high stack of Excel spreadsheets. It's more like Angry Birds for data nerds. I just dived into it for an overly long while. Here are a few pearls I surfaced with.

Measured