This book is dated, but still fascinating!

Menzel and D’Aluisio, authors of The Material World have created yet another fascinating collection of photos, stories and statistics from around the world. While The Material World focused on the material possessions of households around the world, this collection focuses on the diet and foods of everyday families. Families are photographed with a week’s worth of food, along with a general description of calorie intake for their country, expenditure of food, number of McDonald’s in the country and other related statistics.

Menzel manages to capture the human essence of the families and their everyday struggles to provide and cook healthy food. The family I found most interesting was the small family in Greenland, off on a hunting trip in sub-zero weather to fish. Other fascinating groups include Cubans, living off their monthly stipend from the government, the "eat it if it moves" southern Chinese, and the citizens of Okinawa, which boasts the highest rate of 100+ year old residents in the world. While American/pre-processed packaged food shows up in most of the countries, it is refreshing to hear of some families that either grow all their own food and shop only locally, purposefully shunning pre-packaged food, and others who simply cannot wrap their mind around people who do not have their own gardens.

Sadly, there are other families, like one in Mexico, that are baffled by their family obesity, tooth decay and diabetes, which not surprisingly seems to have come about around the time the family opened a small bodega and started drinking gallons of Coke a week. Also not surprising is the truly terrifying sight if an average American families grocery run - a few sad veggies sticking out between the chip bags. A great read or skim-through and a great incentive to go check out some cookbooks from the library! Maybe I’ll review some of them next month…

Title: Hungry Planet: What The World Eats
Author: Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio
Genre: Photo Essay
Theme(s): Perspectives, culture, unity, apprieciation
Opening line/sentence: JAPAN: The Ukita family of Kodaria City

Brief Book Summary: This book shows readers what other parts of the world look like. What are those other families go though? What do they eat? How to they survive? Some cultures are new, some are not. It brings a big tear to your eyes on some pages when you realize you shouldn’t take things for granted.

Professional Recommendation/Review #1:
Publishers Weekly (Publishers Weekly)
For their enormously successful Material Worldn, photojournalist Menzel and writer D'Aluisio traveled the world photographing average people's worldly possessions. In 2000, they began research for this book on the world's eating habits, visiting some 30 families in 24 countries. Each family was asked to purchase—at the authors' expense—a typical week's groceries, which were artfully arrayed—whether sacks of grain and potatoes and overripe bananas, or rows of packaged cereals, sodas and take-out pizzas—for a full-page family portrait. This is followed by a detailed listing of the goods, broken down by food groups and expenditures, then a more general discussion of how the food is raised and used, illustrated with a variety of photos and a family recipe. A sidebar of facts relevant to each country's eating habits (e.g., the cost of Big Macs, average cigarette use, obesity rates) invites armchair theorizing. While the photos are extraordinary—fine enough for a stand-alone volume—it's the questions these photos ask that make this volume so gripping. After considering the Darfur mother with five children living on $1.44 a week in a refugee camp in Chad, then the German family of four spending $494.19, and a host of families in between, we may think about food in a whole new light. This is a beautiful, quietly provocative volume.

Professional Recommendation/Review #2:
Peter H. Howard (Associate Professor, Michigan State)
Visually stimulating photographs supplemented with engaging prose makes Hungry Planet pleasant but intellectually challenging. The large, glossy photographs initially beg for the book to reside on a convenient coffee table, however, its text and messages are far too important to be pushed aside. This book is suitable for individuals of all levels of food system understanding, though may be of particular use for those interested in, and academic courses pertaining to, globalization and international food systems. Menzel and D’Aluisio make the daily lives of families around the world intriguing and engaging, and Hungry Planet tells an important story pertaining to the way the world eats, interacts with food, and the challenges we all face, or stand to face, regarding our relationship with food.



Response to Two Professional Reviews:
tI agree with the previews that the photos bring lots of emotions out. Just as Professor Howard says, the photos are intellectually challenging. It’s easy to see the difference among cultures and regions, but difficult to grasp why this is such a gap. I think to actually see the differences really hits home that we should appreciate what we have.

Evaluation of Literary Elements:
tThe focus of this essay is obviously the pictures, but what hit me the most was the captions under the pictures that shared the “food expenditure for the week.” Seeing the fluctuations in the numbers definitely broke my heart. For the children who read this, I think the pictures are enough for them to understand the gist of the essay. Children are observant and I think through the different foods they see, they’ll understand that not everyone is privileged.

Consideration of Instructional Application:
tThis is a good opportunity to teach a lesson about appreciation for grades 3-5. Our class will play a game based on the families in the photo essay. Each group of 3-4 students will be a family and I will give them a certain amount of paper money. For example if a group is the Namgay family from Bhutan, they will only receive $5.03, where as a group who is the Melander family of Germany will receive $500.07. In each round students will try to grocery shop, and realized that not everyone can eat a lot. After 3 rounds, the class will have a discussion on how they felt and what they learned.
t

4.5 stars

I ran across this book in the cookbook section of the library. While it has a few recipes in it, it's not a traditional cookbook. It's a comparison of various families around the world and what they eat in the course of a week. Each family is surrounded by all the food they would normally purchase and eat in one week with corresponding list of food items in the picture and food cost.

This book was put together in 2005, so the world and its economy has had time to change in 10 years. The Americans in the book seem to eat a lot of sodas, fast food, and processed food with few fruits & vegetables. However, I'd venture to guess that perhaps they eat fewer processed foods these days as a result of books and educational endeavors to change American eating habits. I would also guess that they buy less food overall with the same amount of money buying so much less food. I found it interesting how one of the families talked about how they tried adding in gym workouts to their weekly routines which ended up creating the problem of eating out more because there wasn't time to cook and work out after a day at work. I recently ditched my gym membership, too, so that I'd have more time to cook at home and do more natural types of exercise like yard work.

For most of the countries in the book, I was shocked by how much food a normal family consumes in a week. In most cases, it seemed excessive ... or that there were interesting points of excess exhibited within a culture. I was struck by how much meat Australians eat; how many chili peppers Bhutanis eat; how much bread, pasta, and cigarettes Italians consume; how much beer Germans go through; and how many African cuisines focus more on filling up with whatever grain is available than making tasty food.

The Turkish section seemed so typical of what I've experienced in Turkish cooking classes where measurements are loose and depend on knowing the size of the coffee cup that the cook uses in her kitchen to measure. And, even after a day at work, the typical Turkish cook will spend 2 hours on prepping all the little dishes they like to serve: rolled this and stuffed that. I never have the time to duplicate these types of labor-intensive dishes at home when my family wants food 15 minutes ago.

I was most impressed most by the section on Okinawa, Japan, where they have a disproportionate number of people living to be over 100. Scientist have attributed their longevity to their healthy eating habits, exercise, low stress, and the community's assistance of their elders. They eat largely seafood and vegetables and live by the motto hara hachi bu - "eat only until 80% full". What a revelation, right?

Another interesting thing about most countries is that blended families were the norm with very few families consisting of just husband, wife, and children. Most included other family members of various generations.

All in all, I found the book highly interesting. It's hard to say whether these represent truly typical families within a country, but it was a nice view into various kitchens around the world.

What a freaking fantastic book; this will sit on my coffee table forever. Peter and Faith present a kaleidoscope of cultures through vibrant pictures and well-written narratives of the lives of the subjects. It can be stunning to be learning about a family living in a tiny hut with no electricity in Bhutan, then to turn the page to find yourself in Australia where the family beams in front of an aboveground pool.

From refugee camp rations to gallons of Coke, we get an intimate view of what people the world over eat. Sometimes it's shocking, sometimes it's about what you expect; the more industrialized and developed a country is, the bigger the proportion of their table is crowded by packaged and processed products, while those in the Global South tend to have their tables covered in vegetables, grains, and fruit, and only sometimes meat.

Being a reader in the US, this book puts our privilege squarely in perspective, and teaches us not only to be appreciative of what we have, but gives us greater knowledge about the world unknown to us until now.

Grateful, Conservation, Resources, Family.

This book is full of beautiful, intricate photographs of families from across the world in their kitchens with a week's worth of food spread around them. Each family is accompanied by a narrative essay, photos of their markets and grocery stores, a detailed list of every item in the photo with accompanying costs, and facts about their country. Totally fascinating, but slow going as there is much to look at and think about. I guarantee you'll be depressed at all the great bread the rest of the world (even by much poorer families) is eating compared to the limp, squooshy stuff on your countertop. A *great* read.

Another book that had me mostly looking at the photos! It was very eye-opening to see how much processed food some people on this planet eat, myself included. It has made me a little more conscientious of how much I buy and eat for my family. And it is humbling to see how little some people eat. I am very lucky to live in such a prosperous nation, and that I have the means and access to so much.

Phenomenal statistical and visual snapshot of what people eat around the world. This book explores how much people spend a week on food and what types of food they are buying, eating, and growing. There are endless stats on cigarette consumption and obesity in both the developed and non developed world. It even covers how many McDonalds' are in each country highlighted. Fascinating book with my favorite culture being the Inuits in Greenland. And I complain about it being cold at 50 degrees!?

Really cool book. Here's a link to some of the pictures in the book. The author (with his wife, who was the photographer) traveled around the world interviewing families about what they eat, how much they spend, etc. Unique insight into a variety of countries and economic classes.

I love picture books, voyeurism, and food packaging from other countries. I spent an afternoon holding this giant book close to my nose as I strained to examine every inch of the photos. The general idea is that families from all over the world pose with a week's worth of groceries. You get the expected American fast food and the bags of grain in Africa. I honestly didn't read many of the essays or sidebar notes, but I enjoyed flipping through the photos. I have decided that I am moving to France. According to the family they profiled, they eat good chocolate, sensible vegetables, and very little meat. Right up my alley.