Rules TBD.
The answer to misleading information about USSR had issues feeding its population. source : https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp84b00274r000300150009-5
It's difficult to compare diets across countries like this because of differences in lifestyle and genetics. I am actually a nutritionist but it's like 2 am here, I'll run some numbers tomorrow and double check this but I suspect it's probably right.
So it turns out this is actually super hard to analyse by modern standards (I am also coming at it from another country with different guidelines again, which complicates it a bit) so take all of what I'm saying with a pretty hefty grain of salt.
We don't group foods together like this any more, but it seems to have been the done thing back in the '80s-'90s so I'm a bit out of my depth. These days potatoes wouldn't be lumped in with grain / carbohydrates, they'd count as vegetables. Likewise eggs wouldn't go with dairy, they'd go with meat and fish as protein.
Calorie intake depends heavily on demographics; age, sex, physical activity level, etc, so it's really hard to assess for huge populations like this and there's fuck all information about the USSR in that area from this time. Generally speaking though, NHS recommends 2000cal/day for women and 2500 for men. So, they're both way over on that, but the USA is over by more. WHO recommends no more than 10% daily energy from sugar. Again, they're both over on that, but the USA is over by a lot more. Fats are recommended to be 20%-35% of daily energy; this article doesn't account for fats from dairy or meat so the numbers quoted here are low, and impossible to separate out. I did, however, find a journal article from 1985 while trying to work all this out. This one puts men aged 40-59 at 2567cal/day in the USSR and 2554cal/day in USA; a 13 calorie difference (that's about half an ounce of apple) with USSR higher, but a lot closer to modern NHS guidelines for both. For the USSR; 38% from fat vs. 40% from fat in USA. Again, both over, but USA over by more.
In conclusion, this data is badly categorised, way too high-level, and too over-generalised to really draw much of value from, but speaking really broadly, yeah. About the same amount of food. Neither is ideal, but the Soviet diet is probably slightly better. I'd really, really like to see the sources they used.
Interesting, thank you!
The separation of per cent like looks really weird. I knew that was the origin, but I never thought it was used like that recently.
Also meat is actually very nutritious. Lots of vitamins and minerals in meat.
Does this take into consideration they were washing it down with vodka?
Due to evolution, people will generally prefer to eat more calorically dense foods like meat, fat, and sugar whenever it's an option. In the west people could afford more meat, fat, and sugar, while people in the USSR could only afford a smaller amount of that, so they had no choice but to consume cheaper food like grain and eggs.
The difference in their diets wasn't intentional, it was merely the result of westerners having more ability to acquire what they wanted, while soviets were stuck with what they could get.
Additionally, every part of the world has different regional cuisines that are based on what ingredients were historically available and cultural norms. So even if you compare the diets of two societies that are otherwise equal in most ways (like UK vs. US) there will always be significant differences in what they eat.
Nothing about the aims of socialism can be inferred from this report.
If you take into account the effects of subsidies (which are social programs) on the availability of certain types of foods and how lobbying efforts form which subsidies make their way into law and practice, the aims of different forms of social programs definitely can be inferred. Further, the dollars spent on lobbying efforts come indirectly from the profitability of certain industries under given subsidy programs, so that sort of magnifies the effects of those dollars, based on where and what industries they are focused on.
These are all choices made by societies, indirectly or directly, at some level. None of them are just given. There's definitely an influence from differing environmental factors (land use, suitability and availability, differing climates, soil types, etc across the globe), but none of them have to be the way they ended up.
All of that may be outside the scope of this report, but they are definitely contributing factors. Summed up, they speak to the aims of a given social structure.