Did you ever hear of the Big Mac index? It was a way to determine whether currencies were over or under valued by comparing the price of the same product, a Big Mac, in different countries.
It was also used by economists to provide an informal way of measuring whether the economy as a whole was doing well or not. The more people ate homogenized, mega-corporate food, the worse the economy was theoretically doing, and the less hope people had for the future.
Venkatesh Rao wrote an article for Forbes last week posing the question of whether a food truck index should replace the Big Mac index as the informal indicator of how an economy is theoretically doing, and if people are hopeful for the future.
Basically, the more people eat local food and less fast food or agri-corp foodstuffs, the better the economy is doing, and the more hope people have for the future. That’s where food trucks come into the equation.
Click here for the complete article, which makes an interesting read, although a few of his numbers seem a bit off. Street food is booming, but no way there are 3 million food trucks and 5 million food carts in the US.
