What Does The World Eat?

Last week, I re-discovered an amazing book I bought a few years ago, written photographed by Faith D’Aluisio and Peter Menzel, a California-based writer-photographer couple, who boldly invited themselves for dinner with 30 families in 24 countries.

For me, the most powerful component of the book is the photographs featuring all the members of a household with a week’s worth of grocery shopping laid out in front of them. The authors also provide an insightful break-down of how much was spent on what, e.g. dairy products, fruit & veg, starchy foods, sweets, snacks, beverages, etc.

I’ve reproduced a handful of pictures, to give you an idea. Excuse the poor quality – the originals in the book are, of course, far superior. (The added captions are mine).

The German Family. What amused me about this shot was how neatly all the food and drinks were lined up – none of the other families managed to do it quite this orderly, lol.

The Mexican family. Mexico has the world’s highest per capita consumption of soft drinks after the US. And sure enough, the picture shows a long row of Coke bottles in the back.

A family in Mali. Gosh, 15 people and barely any food! OK, some big sacks of grain (millet, corn, rice), but very few vegetables, and, even more disconcertingly, no protein foods except for a titchy canister of milk and a small bag of dried fish.

If you want to see some more pictures, click on this link from The Guardian.

The book was published in 2005, but it has lost none of its relevance. I cannot recommend it highly enough for anyone who’s interested in food and in the vastly different diets consumed by the people(s) of our planet.

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