My estimate is approximately 1.5 billion kitchens. That is simply by assuming a world population of 7.4 billion, and dividing by 5.

Looking up statistics leaves me frustrated by endless notes and qualifications, and odd categories in strange spreadsheets.

To think that the slogan for World Statistics Day recently was “Better data. Better lives”.

But from some dedicated searching, mine might be the first-ever published estimate of world kitchen numbers.

People do speak on the internet about 1.4 billion households worldwide – so 1.5b kitchens is probably in the general vicinity.