Wow. Just wow. The clarity this brings to diet, locality and socio-economic status is incredible.

This is a masterpiece on what we can call as food anthropology. While reading one can actually feel how lives of people revolve around food throughout the world be it Iceland, Bhutan, Italy, or Japan. An amazing read!

I would give this book 8 stars if I could.
What a great idea! I've seen the book where they place families and all their possessions outside their dwelling around the world, but this takes one weeks worth of food the family eats and places it in front of them.

The family may be the father/mother/children or elderly couple with a more elderly parent or widowed mother/children.

Not only is it the amazing photographs, every food item is categorized including quantity and price, but the entire grocery bill (or market value as some garden and some hunt) in the native currency as well as the dollar amount.
We also find out the favorite foods of many and get a recipe or two from each family. It's really not a cookbook, but an exploration of how many eat all around the world.
This book is VERY well done and very thorough. I was so amazed I showed it to my husband, who was almost late going to work because he couldn't put it down either.

How often do you sit around and think about what you actually eat over the course of a week? How often do you ponder how what you eat impacts your time, your health, your relationships and the overall life of the planet? What would happen if you sat around and read a book describing what other people around the globe eat and how it impacts them, their health, and ultimately, your health as well? We're all connected, as they say.

This book is brilliant. It is enlightening. It makes you think. And it gives you a rare opportunity to glimpse how other people live their lives by inviting you into their homes and workplaces and seeing, for yourself, the pile of food they consume (either by choice or necessity) in an average week. It also introduces you to different perspectives about what is necessary to be healthy and perhaps happy and by showing you exactly what is on everybody's plate you get an idea that it's not necessarily the same thing everywhere you go.

My big takeaway from reading this book is that less is more, faster isn't better, and new and improved "packaging" of food might be the death of us all.

I almost have no words to describe how amazing this book is. Menzel, a photographer, and D'Aluisio, who authors the text to go with his photography and happens to be his wife, spent a week each with thirty families in twenty-four countries. At the end of that week, Menzel and D'Aluisio paid for each family to buy an average week's worth of groceries. Each family poses with their food in their home, such as it is, and the book provides a grocery list in addition to a few pages about the family. The families vary greatly in size (both the size of the individual members and the number of family members), location, and wealth, from a family of six refugees in Chad (the total street value of their UN rations for one week: $1.23) to a family of four in Germany (total food expenditures for the week: $500.07) and many other places (including a hunting family in Greenland, which I found particularly interesting, as well as Bhutan, Bosnia, Guatemala, and - of course - the United States). D'Aluisio doesn't pass judgment on any of the families for what they eat, but it's difficult not to notice that, for example, the family from Guatemala eats almost all whole grains, fruit and vegetables, or that fifteen people in Mali eat significantly less than even a family of five in Mexico. Highly recommended.

okay, I'm not quite done with this book yet, but I'm nearly through and it needs to go back to the library... over a week ago I guess... so, here's my review.

From the folks that brought us the Material World coffee table book, which was photographs of families with all their possesions outside their houses, comes a book, featuring many of the same families I believe, this time posed with all their food for a week. Highlighting the differences in diet among the various folks in various places in the world, and the changes that have happened in recent years with refrigeration and rapid transport and the expansion of convenience foods and fast-food restaurants, this book gives a sort of cross section of humanity viewed through the lens of food, which is pretty much the only lens that matters when you get right down to it. Each family portrait with food is accompanied by a number of other photos, an essay and various notes and statistics about the country as a whole, as well as the specifics of the food purchases for the week. Interspersed between the families from Chad, Greenland, Germany, Italy, Kuwait, Turkey, Poland, the Phillipeans and so on are various essays by food writers (folks like Michael Pollan and Francine Kauffman) and comparison photo spreads of meat around the world and such things.

A wonderful book, deserving of a place on any coffee table.

Menzel's book was wonderful and startling and made me think. He's hooked up with families across the globe and photographed them with a week's worth of food on the table, then priced the week's food. Oh my. The dietary variation is incredible with plant based diets in developing or isolated nations amounting to such a small selection (through a western lens) and costing so little. Developed nations are high calorie with many foods of low nutritive value, many prepared and packaged foods and so so expensive. I should do this and think hard about hunger, wealth and sustenance.

When I stumble upon such an- depth decades -long research spreading across the world I am simply stunned.

This meticular photo- research tells us the story of what the world eats and how much is being paid for it. Owing to the book I can see where the world plastic problem comes from and the tendency that bends our eating habits and consequent health deceases caused by it.

A well-worth read!

We recieved this book as a wedding gift along with Material World, another 5 star book. Hungry Planet is a written and photogrpahic journey of the eating habits of families in various countries. Each family visually displays and lists their weekly grocery purchases. The narrative provides background on the family and the history and customs of their country. The family also provides a favorite recipe--I hope to go back and try some of these. The most interesting countries for me were Okinawa for the longevity diet of its people; Greenland for the remoteness; and The Phillipines for a true understanding of their political history. I know I will come back to this book many times and recommend it for everyone's coffee table.

Insightful! This is an excellent read for anyone considering our dietary choices. Certainly makes me reevaluate how much I think I need to spend on food and how much is actually wasted. Also, helps me appreciate the my living space.

The authors visited 30 families in 24 countries and asked them about their dietary habits, as well as taking a photo of them with a week's worth of food. The countries visited ranged from the US & Australia to Chad and Mongolia. Essays about food-related social issues from various authors (including Jared Diamond & Eric Schlosser, IIRC) are sprinkled throughout, and a chart comparing the countries' financial & food-related statistics is included at the back. A fascinating (& depressing) look at world-wide consumption.

Every parent should read this book with their child.