@BudgetSlasher, thanks for your analysis!
1) You're right, I'm throwing stones in a glasshouse. My chocolate consumption is certainly way above average, but so is my metabolism. :) About one in five Norwegian adults suffers from obesity (up from 5% in the late 60's) and the same is true for 16-18% of 7-8 year olds. These are very concerning numbers, even though a majority of Norwegians remains within the "normal" BMI range. I find arguments of the "others are worse"-style enlightening, but they should not work to relax ambition. Probably the more so in a MMM context.
2) Unfortunately, this is the sloppy way the statistics were published. Yet I think these are the averages per shopping instance they found.
3) I have lived 8 years in the GDR, 14 in united Germany and 12 in Norway, in between I have been visiting most of Europe's countries. What is special about Norway is that the death of the specialty shop is just as prevalent here as everywhere else (the governmental alcohol monopoly remains in place though), yet we have the most shops per million inhabitants in the world, 464 as of 2011. England had 97 shops per million inhabitants at the time. Unfortunately, it's mostly an oligopoly market, with few actors and very little choice, most shops offering the same products as their neighbouring store (Sweden has on average twice the number of products per store). So all this underlines a culture of frequent and lazy shopping, in my eyes. I would love to seee more statistics of this kind, but it is hard to find...
The storage space equation is certainly valid, TGS! Yet I struggle to understand how we managed to shop as little as we did as students, ten years ago. We had a little apartment, but food and groceries didn't get in the way nonetheless. How much can a person eat in a week?