Calories as Currency

When the world went on a single currency, they'd tried to coordinate it with the food rationing in some way, hoping to eventually eliminate the ration books, so they'd made the new currency K's, kilocalories, because that's the unit for measuring the energy equivalent of food. But a person who eats 2,000 kilocalories of steak a day obviously has to pay more than a person eating the same amount of bread. So they instituted a sliding "ration factor," so complicated that nobody could understand it. After a few weeks they were using the books again, but calling food kilocalories "calories" in an attempt to make things less confusing. Seemed to me they'd save a lot of trouble all around if they'd just call money dollars again, or rubles or sisterces or whatever � anything but kilocalories.

Food prices were astonishing, except for grains and legumes. I insisted on splurging on some good red meat: 1500 calories worth of ground beef, costing 1730K. The same amount of fakesteak, made from soy beans, would have cost 80K.

I also got a head of lettuce for 140K and a little bottle of olive oil for 175K. Mother said she had some vinegar. Started to buy some mushrooms but she said she had a neighbor who grew them and could trade something from her balcony garden.

Notes:

Folksonomies: economics speculation currency nutrition calories

Taxonomies:
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/food and drink (0.439256)
/food and drink/food/condiments and dressings (0.398224)

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Entities:
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The Forever War

Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Haldeman, Joe (2009-02-17), The Forever War, Macmillan, Retrieved on 2014-10-05

Source Material [books.google.com]

Folksonomies: fiction science fiction