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Doing the quick math using numbers from google, it looks like ground beef costs about 33% more in the US than in the UK, but the average American makes 38% more money. So in terms of percentage of wages, it's cheaper for Americans to buy beef than for the British to do so. Now you might say "What's so great about Americans making more money when their stuff costs more?" And when it comes to food, that's mostly a reasonable point. Richer countries do spend less of their paycheck on food, but it's not that big of a difference. Still, an average American could retire in a poor country and eat like a king forever just due to the exchange rate. The major reason that food is more closely tied to a local country's economy is because so much food is locally made. It makes perfect sense that farmers in India take some percentage of each Indian person's pay to feed them and that American farmers need to take a similar percentage of pay from Americans to feed them. The advantage for the wealthier country comes from any kind of product that isn't locally made If you want rice, you pay the local cost of rice. If you want an iPhone, it costs more or less the same thing to everyone in the world. The average American can afford a new iPhone every couple years if they really wanted it. The average person in a poor country is certainly not able to do that. So even if people around the world spend a somewhat similar amount of money on food, how we spend our money on luxuries is very different.