Today, I went to the bookstore to pick up some recommended reading (In Defense of Food, An Eater’s Manifesto). I asked the nice woman at the desk to help me locate it. She took me to the cultural studies section, where I saw another very interesting book called Hungry Planet: What the World Eats. Apparently, this book was published in 2005 and I missed it. It is a collaborative work by photographer, Peter Menzel and writer, Faith D’Aluisio.

 

The book takes you on a food journey with 30 families in 24 countries. Each family is photographed with their week’s supply of groceries along with the cost and breakdown of every item. In the course of a week, you also see where they shop, how they prepare food and other daily activities. You could read all this information and gain knowledge, but the photography is fascinating.

No matter where you are in the world, food is a basic need that everyone can relate to. It is truly amazing how a family can survive on so little, showing strong insight on inequality. In the back of the book, there is a measuring table for each country. This gives the population density, life expectancy, health care expenditure, etc. For example, in the USA, the percentage of diabetics, age 20 years or older, is 8.8 percent, while Mongolia has a rate of 2.5 percent. 

Here are some examples of what you can see in this book. Notice the size of the family compared to the amount of food and the cost.