Today is National Hunger Awareness Day and so I thought I'd tell you about this great book called Hungry Planet: What the World Eats by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio. It's a fascinating coffee table book with portraits of families, surrounded by the food they eat during the course of a week. It's amazingly thought-provoking (compare the Californian family to say, the family in Bhutan or Chad) and wonderfully interesting. There are 30 families in 24 countries, and each of them are profiled with a small story, a full shopping list (with prices) and a family recipe. If you get a chance, I highly recommend that you spend some time with it. It's available for $40, but you can probably find it at your local library. I've included some of the photos in the book, click on each one for more information (including location and money spent on food per week).
Images from Hungry Planet courtesy of Time in Partnership with CNN
Juicy Couture
Nuovegioie
Marni
This is really interesting.
1wow.
2ugh for some reason i don't like how the US is represented. i mean that's not what i eat on average so maybe that's why. there is a serious lack of vegetables and fruits in the USA families and so many useless carbs.........blaaah! and where's the seafood??
if i had to choose the food i'd eat for a week i'd probably choose either Cairo or Japan.
I think what is so amazing about this is how much more fruit and veggies people in 3rd world countries eat, and how much cheaper they are! Look at all the processed & packaged food in the US and Japanese photos. cool post.
3Very cool post. I think it's a perfect representation of the way most U.S. families eat. It's a challenge to get your kids to eat healthily. As kids get older you have less time to prepare and sit down to the good stuff so the heavily-processed, heat-and-eat foods are more appealing.
4Did you notice the big difference two teen-aged boys can make in your food bill? Holy cow!
I think it's important to note that the African family had one bottle of water for their week. Totally eye opening. Think I might have to join a hunger awareness charity...
5That was so interesting. I really enjoyed seeing all the fresh produce and goods that the other countries were consuming. Very cool.
6Thank you for posting this.
7between all the bread and the fruit i love sicilly the most
8I really miss my country food
9This is a really interesting post and I would like to see the whole book. Anyone else notice how universal bananas seem?
10Wow, this is eye-opening for so many reasons. Thank you for sharing.
11I hafta go look. It sounds very interetsing.
12how interesting!! now i'm hungry!
13If you live in the SF area you can see an exhibit on this in Napa. It is at Copia (Center for wine, food and arts) and there is a gallery dedicated to it. There actually are a couple of countries that spend more on food and eat just as poorly as depicted by the American families. Copia also makes for a good day trip. Check it out on line.
14Wow, so interesting!
I want to go and eat a ton of veggies now.
15wow
16this is amazing
soooo thought provoking
isn't it sad how the richer countries eat so many refined processed foods?
the african family broke my heart
i think this is an amazing book idea
something good to teach children with too!
GREAT post YumSugar thanks!
17Very interesting! Thanks cheifdishwasher, I might have to check that out!
18chancleta, totally agree about showing the book to kids! maybe this would be the start of a revised family eating plan!
19Wow--it's amazing how much pre-packaged food we eat here in America. Even if your family doesn't eat the two pizzas seen in the one picture, or the entire box of corn dogs seen in the other, you'll have to agree we eat too much ready-made and preservative-filled food. It's a shame that stuff is cheap here, and the fresh stuff which is common on Egyptian and Sicilian tables is more expensive, and shipped from far away.
20Very interesting indeed. You should also check out other works by Peter Menzel including "Material World: A Global Family Portrait". It is similar Hungry Panet, but instead of food it takes a look at material goods around the world.
21Very sobering and thought provoking. I am glad that many who've written comments are big fans of fresh produce as I am. But I'd just like to add that produce, especially organic, can be very costly for many US family budgets when compared to processed foods. Sad. Busy parents, lack of nutritional education and eating what is familiar to your family's culture can also affect what you purchase and how you prepare it. Interesting sidenote: the US is presently losing approx 1.2 million acres of farmland on a yearly basis. Farmer's across the country face a whole slew of issues even as we experience greater awareness of the benefits of growing locally and organically.
22I ordered this book from Amazon on the day you first told us about it. It is an amazing book.
23Like everyone else, I found this to be so eye-opening and thought provoking. We often think that the U.S. can teach other countries so much, yet we forget that we can also learn alot from other societies. Healthy eating habits that focus more on natural foods is certainly one of them. Thank you for this post!
24thank you so much for sharing this, it really opened my eyes.
25That is not even close to what i eat. but i do realize that most americans are addicted to fast food.
26Parsty Sugar's family saw this exhibit at the COPIA wine center when she was hard at work! It was really interesting. When we were there the photographer was giving a tour to elementary school kids and he discussed his reasons for pairing the photos the way he did......I was thinking this would be a good topic for you guys!
27Wow, best and most interesting post I've seen in a while. I agree with what someone else said though--I don't like how the U.S. is represented. I certainly eat nothing like that family does.
28This was in Times magazine.
29this is absolutely fantastic - i just wish they took pictures of more families in different countries!
30This post just made me cry. I can't believe how little some families survive- or don't survive- on every week. I'm also amazed that some of the smallest families (like the Americans) eat so much more than some of the huge families of other countries.
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