It's not perfect, but it's damn amazing.

Amazon does a good review, which I am going to borrow:

Amazon.com
It's an inspired idea--to better understand the human diet, explore what culturally diverse families eat for a week. That's what photographer Peter Menzel and author-journalist Faith D'Alusio, authors of the equally ambitious Material World, do in Hungry Planet: What the World Eats, a comparative photo-chronicle of their visits to 30 families in 24 countries for 600 meals in all. Their personal-is-political portraits feature pictures of each family with a week's worth of food purchases; weekly food-intake lists with costs noted; typical family recipes; and illuminating essays, such as "Diabesity," on the growing threat of obesity and diabetes. Among the families, we meet the Mellanders, a German household of five who enjoy cinnamon rolls, chocolate croissants, and beef roulades, and whose weekly food expenses amount to $500. We also encounter the Natomos of Mali, a family of one husband, his two wives, and their nine children, whose corn and millet-based diet costs $26.39 weekly.

We soon learn that diet is determined by largely uncontrollable forces like poverty, conflict and globalization, which can bring change with startling speed. Thus cultures can move--sometimes in a single jump--from traditional diets to the vexed plenty of global-food production. People have more to eat and, too often, eat more of nutritionally questionable food. Their health suffers.

Because the book makes many of its points through the eye, we see--and feel--more than we might otherwise. Issues that influence how the families are nourished (or not) are made more immediate. Quietly, the book reveals the intersection of nutrition and politics, of the particular and universal. It's a wonderful and worthy feat. --Arthur Boehm

99:2023
Denser than I expected, but generally fascinating.

WOW would be a good one-word reaction to this beautifully done book full of food for thought. I am a fan of the Material World books, anyway, but this one was really thought-provoking, with scattered essays to point up some of the issues illustrated by the photos. This is a fantastic book, a must-read for anyone wanting to know more about the people of the world and what lives are like. I am still pondering and processing some of what I read. Some things I've been thinking about:
1) I'm stunned at how much some people spend on their food
2) Fascinated on the role of women in producing and preparing food
3) I think some of the people in "poor countries" who to us dont' look like they "have much"--still have a FAR healthier diet, in the midst of privation, than most Americans do
4) The role of the family in survival, food production and preparation
All of this on top of the "run of the mill" reactions to seeing how little some people have to survive on, and the shaking of the head at struggling families who nevertheless seem to be able to buy soda and beer and cigarettes.
This would be a great beginning of a meaningful ethical geography study for my homeschool students.
Another WOW.

Fine photojournalism on one of the most basic things that binds us, and in some ways, also separates us, as people sharing one globe.
Bit of a warning: this book came out in 2005, so some of the info is certainly out of date, but I think the general portrait is still apropos.
Interesting read for anyone interested in the geography & cultural significance of food.

Yet another piece of literature that I picked up during my food book craze, this book is very similar to What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets. The authors of this book, Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio, traveled around a good variety countries of the world and spent a week with each featured family to learn about their lifestyle through the food they consume in each week. From seal meat in Alaska to street foods in the Philippines, it is filled with interesting, authentic, wholesome, and easy-to-read information. It reads more like a collection of stories than a book since it is arranged by family, and each section contains many pictures, a list of all the foods the family eats by food group, statistics about the country that the family resides in, and a detailed report on the family's daily lives. Because of the way it is organized, you can pick this book up and read any section at any time (since it has no chronological plot), so I think of it as a good summer read. Although it was purely informational, the content made me hungry and kept me captivated as it took me on a whirlwind food tour of the world.

I actually like this book a lot more than other similar books such as Material World. I first saw this as an exhibit at the Field Museum in Chicago and then read a copy of the hardcover book. I enjoyed it enough so that I bought the paperback version and although I have not reread it, but I have occasionally looked through it.

It doesn’t get 5 stars from me because, as with all these books comparing people’s circumstances depending on what countries/parts of the world they reside, it doesn’t provide much in the way of variations within countries/areas. I know the photographers/writers/editors can do only so much, but I consider this a significant flaw.

What was most interesting to me is how, even in destitute areas, the people in many other countries eat so much better than I/many others do in the United States and other western first world countries. The photos really tell the story: lots of processed “foods” here, and plenty of fresh produce/foods in many other places. Although I haven’t made huge changes in my own diet, this book is one of the sources that reminded me that simple is usually healthier, and often more delicious. That said, I continue to like variety and, even though I don’t have the means to grow my own food, I feel fortunate to have the financial resources to procure sufficient food.

This was a fun read. Although an older book, it’s a great visual into how the world eats each week.

Very nice pictures, and made me think about what I eat and how people look more and more healthy as they approach the ground in what they eat. The families that spent more and had everything in little bottles and packets, look also more and more unhealthy. I liked the lack of biases in this book, and the way it makes you re-evaluate your whole life by seeing all those happy faces that are so happy with so little.

I saw something on Facebook once that added up what the average person spent if every meal they ate was purchased. $5 at the coffee shop. $10 for lunch. $15 for dinner. "You're not too broke to travel; you're just too lazy to cook."

Fast food is cheap and convenient. Packaged foods aren't necessarily cheap, but convenient. Cooking at home is healthier and cheaper, but not many of us do it. An article in The Washington Post from March 2015 stated that less than 60 percent of suppers served at home were actually cooked at home last year. The percentage was closer to 75 percent 30 years earlier.

We live in an interesting paradox where the amount of people eating too much nearly mirrors the number of people without enough. Hungry Planet: What The World Eats explores this phenomenon by spending time with 30 families in 24 countries. They watched what they ate, how they shopped, and how they prepared their food for a week. At the end of seven days, they created a portrait with the family and the food they consumed in one week. The differences were such an eye-opener. Families in China ate so many fresh fruits and vegetables, while refuges relied on rice and mot much else. We think of Americans as the biggest consumer of fast foods, but other countries take advantage of its convenience, too -- while lamenting the downfall of their culinary culture.

If you saved all the food/liquids that you ate/drank in a week and placed everything onto a table, what would the table look like? This was the question posed by photographer Peter Menzel and writer Faith D'Aluisio who traveled around the world and documented in startling photographs and prose what normal families typically ate/drank. Each chapter of the book contained a full sized family portrait with the food that the family ate, an interesting essay about the authors' travel in the area, the lifestyle and eating habits of the subject family, a survey of each family member's favorite food and a detailed list of what the family ate during the week and how much it cost. At times, the authors also included recipes of foods that the family made and consumed.

Part travelogue, part foodie documentary and part beautiful coffee table book, the husband/wife authors did an amazing job of living with and eating with families from 30 countries throughout the world and describing matter of factly what people ate. I was struck by their description of the life of a refugee mother in Chad, who fed her children with international aid grains for $1.23 per week and who graciously offered the authors the recipe for making her family's daily porridge called aiysh. I was also surprised that in many parts of the world, people still hunted and gathered their food. For instance, in Greenland, a family ate musk ox and walrus that the father hunted with his dog sled. Not surprisingly, families in first world countries such as the U.S., the U.K., Germany and Australia ate more processed foods and more meat, had an abundant selection of food/drink and spent hundreds of dollars a week on food. This is in contrast to families from poorer countries who ate more vegetables and grains, had limited choices and spent far less on food from their weekly income. The book also does a great job of documenting the effect of industrialization on people's diets, such as, western fast food's impact on the eating preferences of children in developing countries, and with beautiful glossy photos, it gives readers a wonderful fly-on-the-wall, off the beaten track look into how people live.

continually use as part of our homeschool studies