2/20/09

what the world eats- in pictures!


Photographer Peter Menzel and author-journalist Faith D'Alusio have gone all over the globe to create this pictoral study of what families are eating on a weekly basis. As someone who is very food-centered, I seriously appreciate the value of this type of documenation. Hungry Planet: What the World Eats was published in 2005 by Ten Speed Press.

A review by Arthur Boehm:
Among the families, we meet the Mellanders, a German household of five who enjoy cinnamon rolls, chocolate croissants, and beef roulades, and whose weekly food expenses amount to $500. We also encounter the Natomos of Mali, a family of one husband, his two wives, and their nine children, whose corn and millet-based diet costs $26.39 weekly.

We soon learn that diet is determined by largely uncontrollable forces like poverty, conflict and globalization, which can bring change with startling speed. Thus cultures can move--sometimes in a single jump--from traditional diets to the vexed plenty of global-food production. People have more to eat and, too often, eat more of nutritionally questionable food. Their health suffers.

Because the book makes many of its points through the eye, we see--and feel--more than we might otherwise. Issues that influence how the families are nourished (or not) are made more immediate. Quietly, the book reveals the intersection of nutrition and politics, of the particular and universal.




view article by NPR here.
view artist website here.
check out Time Magazine Photo Essay here.

2 comments:

Woodstock said...

Very cool!

best wishes,
Ross

Anonymous said...

this is awesome--I believe I have seen this book at the HS library, but never have gotten the chance to stop and look at it. I love the concept! You are always picking something good!