Hungry Planet: What the World Eats by peter menzel

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

This is a wonderful travel, food and photography book all in one. The authors take us along a round the world trip visting families in countries from all continents and giving us an account, not just about what they eat, but also how they live, making this a travel book in the true sense of the word. The book also includes several essays from other authors about topics such as the impact of fisheries and collection of other seafood on marine resources, eating habits and health, etc. I really liked this book and the only criticism I have is on its format, small print and weight, that makes it uncomfortable to read - in fact, I resumed my reading to breakfast and snack times, opening the book flat on the table, while eating. I believe there are other editions of this book, with different formats, which I recommend.

0 0 Reply

01RuneMishe

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

One of the best $1 library castoffs I've ever found, fascinating on every page and stupendously impressive in its ambition and achievement. No matter your knowledge of foreign cultures or your own personal relationship with food, there is a lot to mull over. Everyone in my family agrees!

At times it is hard to believe the book is only 20 years old. Occasionally the text reads a bit insensitively on gender issues and there didn't seem to be many qualms about exotifying the "other" -- it's a very American book, a bit brash in tone. Tangentially, when did 2004 start looking like the early 1990s in photos? Or am I just getting old?

0 0 Reply

azarea00

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

Reading Hungry Planet definitely expanded my understanding of our world and the diverse people that inhabit it. I really enjoyed the pictures, and found the portraits of the families standing with their weekly supply of food to be powerful displays of inequality. Personally, I was surprised that while many of the Western countries had so much more in terms quantity, it seemed that many of the other countries enjoyed so much more in terms quality (aside from those in refugee camps).

I thought the recipes from each location were a fun addition. One of my favorite recipes started with "Kill chicken". We recently acquired a pet guinea pig and it was interesting to see that it is a popular food in Ecquador. The book was very enlightening and I'd definitely recommend it. (I must add that I enjoyed "Material World" and "Women in the Material World", both by the same authors as Hungry Planet, as much or even more than "Hungry Planet".)

0 0 Reply

skaterperson777

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

Incredibly interesting and gives so much insight into how different types of people treat food and grocery shopping. Great photos too.

0 0 Reply

bakusatsuHOE

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

The photos in this book are amazing. The text isn't bad either. Really great read for anyone interested in food. My booktalk from library school is down below.

Hungry Planet: What the World Eats, photographed by Peter Menzel, written by Faith D’aluisio.

Have you ever wondered what the neighbors eat? Why they’re so fat, or so thin? What those strange and appetizing smells are that waft in from their kitchens? How about someone in another part of the world?

A family in Australia were raised in the outback. Now that they live in suburban Brisbane, their diet has changed significantly. The parents are both diabetic. Pic

A family in Bhutan are subsistence farmers. Their village just received electricity in 2002. Shopkeepers in their village use satellite dishes to dry red chili peppers. Pic

A family in Chad are refuges from Sudan. They are not allowed to grow their own food, and must hope that the donations of land from Chad and aid from the international community can feed them. Pic

A family in Greenland use a dogsled to travel 5 hours to a frozen fishing lake. The father hunts seal while his son plays air guitar and watches MTV. Pic (2x)

An elderly couple on Okinawa follow their cultural tradition, only eating until mostly full. Their island has the largest number of centenarians per capita in the world. Experts say due to diet changes on the island, children will have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. Pic

A family in Kuwait enjoys a wide variety of traditional and world food. In their desert country where oil is the earning power, 98% of the food and half of the people are imported. Pic

A family in Mexico closed their market when the father illegally crossed the border to the U.S. With the money he sends, his family eats no better than before, and now their father is away. Pic

These are the stories, but the pictures in Hungry Planet tell another story. Each family sits in their kitchen with a week’s worth of food. Everything each member of the family eats. A family in North Carolina featured in this book saw their chapter in the published version. Their eating habits changed overnight. Pic. Pull a chair up to your refrigerator, and learn from our Hungry Planet: What the World Eats, photographed by Peter Menzel, written by Faith D’aluisio.

0 0 Reply

AzaBesher

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

I do not recommend this book. It felt very weird, what they were trying to do. Dry and encyclopedic in parts, but clearly obsessed with the problem of obesity and the rapid reliance on processed foods. In the end I just didn't think it was well executed, and there were several things that were just odd.

Of the 50 or so vignettes, few of the families' stories really felt compelling to me and they couldn't hold my interest. I skimmed a lot of it and it was so dry I couldn't read much in a sitting. Very repetitive – the family has breakfast, people go to the market (or the equivalent source of food), some discussion about the family members' occupations during the day, and then dinner. So if the authors couldn't tell individual stories well, maybe they were looking for patterns and drawing broad conclusions. But they didn't quite do that either, and what was there felt rather amateurish and obvious. It sort of felt like the book couldn't do either thing well. I mean if you're going to write with a certain viewpoint and a certain agenda, go ahead, tell that story, make it compelling and connect the dots. I don't think this book achieved that.

The whole bit of photographing the family with a week of food rations. Except for a very few cases, there's not really much information you can glean from that photo because there is just so much food. There was one comment in the book that families were surprised about how much they ate every week, seeing it all together like that. And I was like really, because I shop for a week's provisions every week so I don't really see how it could be a revelation. And in another part they talk about another family buying in bulk for the photograph, when normally they wouldn't purchase that item in such big amounts because it doesn't keep well. So...they made them waste their money just to get a photo? And they list the weekly grocery price a family spends, but it is per family, not per person, so not very useful because the families were different sizes.

Clearly there is some culinary interest in the book but it is a very minor portion. Instead of a week's worth of food I'd have preferred more photos of the meal preparation and the recipes they actually ate. There is a recipe printed for each family; but in most cases it is only of academic interest because the ingredients are aggressively local – seal for example. The recipes are presented as more of a curiosity than something the average American cook could actually have a hope of reproducing.

0 0 Reply

Allslsl

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

I would have liked to see more daily meals. Also, I didn't think it was fair to show some of the poorest countries when they were not in growing/harvest season.

0 0 Reply

Michiko-desu

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

If you enjoy food, like to read about it, and want to know more about it, this is the perfect book for you. The concept is simple and so brilliant. It involves photos of a family taken with one week of food that they would typically consume. This in itself is a revelation as the families are from all over the world, and we get to see how different or the same people are. Moreover, there are details about all the foods along with some mentions of how the families prepare them.

0 0 Reply

Leave a Review

You must be logged in to rate and post a review. Register an account to get started.

Hungry Planet: What the World Eats

peter menzel faith d/aluisio marion nestle

This edition

More editions

About the author

peter menzel

Readers also enjoyed

Community Reviews