Hungry Planet: What the World Eats

I love this collection of photographs to illustrate the diversity and inequality of food and nutrition around the world. I use this book in several university courses I teach to give students a better understanding of what 'average' families around the world eat and how their access, habits, etc. are impacted by culture, infrastructure, wealth, and region. The authors also include cost information in itemized lists of food eaten by each featured family, as well as epidemiological and economic data describing the countries' wealth and health. An excellent collection.

At the James Beard Awards in 2006, a huge, on-stage screen supplemented each presentation with images for the audience - images that illustrated themes within restaurants, foods, photos, and books. As a "foodie" who writes about beer, I was enchanted by a number of entries, including Hungry Planet: What the World Eats by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio.

So intense was this impression, that I was unable to leave the memory of this book at the Awards Ceremony. Two years later, the compulsion overtook me. Hungry Planet: What the World Eats stood on the shelf at my local bookshop, tempting me with what lived within the covers. This masterful display of "what the world eats," is so alive that, as I read, I become a participant in every global society we pass through.

Each chapter (organized by country) begins with a photograph of a "typical" family unit. The families are posed within their living quarters, surrounded by the food consumed in an average week. We feel as if we are peering into their personal lives. We know how much they spend on this food, (converted into US dollars). We see what they wear, how their family unit is structured, and what we would encounter in the marketplace where they shop. We are exposed to the sudden realization that some societies physically work for an entire lifetime at the meager chance for survival, so harsh are their living conditions. In other societies, the threat of obesity and diabetes looms with constancy, despite an affluence that, in theory, should be the key to longevity and health.

The authors give us extraordinary details about foods in each land - how animals are slaughtered and preserved without refrigeration; the method used to patiently separate barley grains from sand; or the necessity of constantly hand-filling an animal trough with water, because the earth and the heat claim its own share. We imagine surviving on skewered scorpions, seahorses, cicadas and silkworm pupae; Spit-roasted cui (Guinea pig), narwhal skin, polar bear, and camel; Khova (partially caramelized condensed milk), mung beans, spiny lobster, and aiysh (porridge); espresso coffee, well water, jasmine tea, cocoa, and Ur-bock beer. We also contemplate the effect of preservatives, prepared foods, and fast-food franchises on our daily lives in the Western world.

So fascinated was I with this voyeur's look into the personal eating habits within our fellow global societies, that I was unable to put this book down. As a documentary on global survival, it is superb. As a catalyst to our own self-examination, it is invaluable. It does not read like a novel, but is a rich tapestry that can be digested in bits and pieces - with leisure, or as an all-consuming, intellectual work.

Menzel, a photographer, and D'Aluisio, who authors the text that accompanies Menzel's 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. My only complaint would be that I think the essays interspersed in the text distract from the book itself, even though I agreed with the topics in the essays. Highly recommended.

Ever wonder what people in the 'other' places on this planet eat? It is very interesting to read
and see (pictures included) how they plan their food purchases, what they buy and how that
changes from place to place on this planet.

What a cool book! I had to have it for an Economic Geography class and it is just the coolest. It shows families around the world with a weeks worth of their food, and they talk about their lives, eating habits, what they used to eat and how that's changed. It also has recipes for each family, a REAL eye opener. All my roomates were jealous...

Wonderful book! I saw it at my son's P&T meeting as they were using it at school and I had to buy it for myself. This book equals a visit to a home in each country they depict. Unbelievable!

Hungry Planet is a moving look at what families of the world live on...it combines incredible photography, well chosen statistics and outstanding commentary to clearly portray the diversity and real life economic situations of our fellows on planet earth. I love this book for the way it influences my children to see compassionately and with greater gratitude (and me too!)

An through and interesting way to present the food of different cultures. The book not only shows a picture of what a week's worth of food looks like across the globe, but puts how much it costs and in USD. The book also elaborates on the eating habits, culture, and daily life of the people. There are also recipes! A great book with an eye opening perspective of people all over the world.

This book should, in my opinion, be assigned reading for everyone in so-called first world countries. What the author manages to accomplish is nothing short of remarkable- chronicling one week of food consumption in a number of families around the world. The text is well-written and informative, but it's the photographs that speak the loudest. To compare the weekly food consumption of a US or German family with that of a Sudanese or Mongolian family is haunting and recalibrates what we take for granted. Highly recommended.

I love, love, love this book. The photos of real families standing in front of a week's worth of food make me feel as if I know these people. For all our differences, humans everywhere need food. This book is the next best thing to sitting down to a meal with people all over the world.