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Overview
Sitting down to a daily family meal has long been a tradition for billions of people. But in every corner of the world this age-old custom is rapidly changing. From increased trade between countries to the expansion of global food corporations like Kraft and Nestlé, current events are having a tremendous impact on our eating habits. Chances are your supermarket is stocking a variety of international foods, and American fast food chains like McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken are popping up all over the planet.
For the first time in history, more people are overfed than underfed. And while some people still have barely enough to eat, others overeat to the point of illness. To find out how mealtime is changing in real homes, authors Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio visited families around the world to observe and photograph what they eat during the course of one week. They joined parents while they shopped at mega grocery stores and outdoor markets, and participated in a feast where a single goat was shared among many families. They watched moms making dinner in kitchens and over cooking fires, and they sat down to eat with twenty-five families in twenty-one countries—if you’re keeping track, that’s about 525 meals!
The foods dished up ranged from hunted seal and spit-roasted guinea pig to U.N.-rationed grains and gallons of Coca-Cola. As Peter and Faith ate and talked with families, they learned firsthand about food consumption around the world and its corresponding causes and effects. The resulting family portraits offer a fascinating glimpse into the cultural similarities and differences served on dinner plates around the globe.
Synopsis
Sitting down to a daily family meal has long been a tradition for billions of people. But in every corner of the world this age-old custom is rapidly changing. From increased trade between countries to the expansion of global food corporations like Kraft and NestlŽ, current events are having a tremendous impact on our eating habits. Chances are your supermarket is stocking a variety of international foods, and American fast food chains like McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken are popping up all over the planet.
For the first time in history, more people are overfed than underfed. And while some people still have barely enough to eat, others overeat to the point of illness. To find out how mealtime is changing in real homes, authors Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio visited families around the world to observe and photograph what they eat during the course of one week. They joined parents while they shopped at mega grocery stores and outdoor markets, and participated in a feast where a single goat was shared among many families. They watched moms making dinner in kitchens and over cooking fires, and they sat down to eat with twenty-five families in twenty-one countries—if you’re keeping track, that’s about 525 meals!
The foods dished up ranged from hunted seal and spit-roasted guinea pig to U.N.-rationed grains and gallons of Coca-Cola. As Peter and Faith ate and talked with families, they learned firsthand about food consumption around the world and its corresponding causes and effects. The resulting family portraits offer a fascinating glimpse into the cultural similarities and differences served on dinner plates around the globe.
The New York Times - Regina Marler
This amazing volume is a young adult version of their book Hungry Planet…D'Aluisio and Menzel traveled the globe, interviewing families and photographing them with one week's worth of food. From the desert village of Kouakourou in Mali, where Soumana Natomo's two wives trade off breakfast duties on alternating days, to the frozen town of Ittoqqortoormiit in Greenland, where the only fresh food is swimming under nearby ice, the images and essays in What the World Eats are completely captivating …A colorful primer on the global marketplace and cultural change, What the World Eats sparks an intellectual appetite that no amount of narwhal skin can fill.
Editorials
Regina Marler
This amazing volume is a young adult version of their book Hungry Planet…D'Aluisio and Menzel traveled the globe, interviewing families and photographing them with one week's worth of food. From the desert village of Kouakourou in Mali, where Soumana Natomo's two wives trade off breakfast duties on alternating days, to the frozen town of Ittoqqortoormiit in Greenland, where the only fresh food is swimming under nearby ice, the images and essays in What the World Eats are completely captivating …A colorful primer on the global marketplace and cultural change, What the World Eats sparks an intellectual appetite that no amount of narwhal skin can fill.—The New York Times
Publishers Weekly
Adapted from last year's Hungry Planet, this brilliantly executed work visits 25 families in 21 countries around the world. Each family is photographed surrounded by a week's worth of food and groceries, which Menzel and D'Aluisio use as a way of investigating not only different cultures' diets and standard of living but also the impact of globalization: why doesn't abundance bring better health, instead of increased occurrences of diabetes and similar diseases? These points are made lightly: delivered almost conversationally, the main narrative presents friendly, multigenerational portraits of each family, with meals and food preparation an avenue toward understanding their hopes and struggles. A wealth of supporting information-lush color photographs, family recipes, maps, sidebars, etc.-surrounds the text (superb design accomplishes this job harmoniously) and implies questions about global food supplies. Pictures of subsistence farmers in Ecuador cultivating potatoes from mountainous soil form sharp contrasts with those of supermarkets in a newly Westernized Poland. Fact boxes for each country tabulate revealing statistics, among them the percentage of the population living on less than $2 per day (47% in China, where the average daily caloric intake is nonetheless 2,930 per person); the percentage with diabetes; number of KFC franchises. Engrossing and certain to stimulate. All ages. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Children's Literature
If you have ever wondered what your counterparts around the world eat for their daily meals, some answers can be found in this impressive book. It takes a look at what a typical family in a variety of countries buys for a weeks worth of groceries. The families are pictured with the food and the cost is given in local and U.S. dollars. In addition, the foods are categorized: grains; dairy; meat, fish and eggs; fruits and vegetables; condiments; snacks; prepared food; fast food; beverages; and miscellaneous. Readers are presented with a fact box that summarizes information about the country and a presents a section of a world map to show where that country is located. The pages that follow describe life in that part of the world and how the family shops. There are also recipes of some of the traditional foods. A reader might assume that those from wealthier countries who have a variety of foods from around the world might have a healthier diet, but that is not always the case. Major and abrupt changes in diet such as those of aboriginal Australians, Native Americans and the like can bring on diseases like diabetes and issues related to obesity. The book is a treasure trove of facts most of which are presented in graphs and charts. Some that are really intriguing include the number of McDonald's restaurants and a comparison of the overweight and obese populations. You can see a correlation. Other charts relate information about annual meat consumption, life expectancy, access to safe water, literacy rate and fertility rates. There is extensive back matter including books, films, websites and lists of sources plus an extensive index. The author has created an excellent book for reference,report writing and browsing. Reviewer: Marilyn CourtotSchool Library Journal
Gr 6 Up- D'Aluisio and Menzel have adapted their Hungry Planet (Ten Speed, 2005) for younger readers in this visually stunning photographic collection that portrays families from 21 countries, each surrounded by a week's worth of food. Each entry includes a detailed list of the groceries with the equivalent cost in U.S. dollars, notes on methods of food preparation and preservation, fast facts about the country, and an engaging article discussing the family members, their lifestyles and employment, health issues, and food traditions and sources, enhanced by "Photographer's Field Note" and "Family Recipe" sidebars. Bright color photographs in varying sizes depict the wide array of kitchens, markets, and homes found in the cross-section of countries. The juxtaposition of the Aboubakar family of six, living in a refugee camp in Chad on $1.22 a week, and the Revis family of four in North Carolina, spending $341.98 a week on groceries, is jaw-dropping, although the author carefully avoids drawing any judgments about the subjects' choices or circumstances. Additional chapters, scattered through the alphabetical-by-country arrangement, include statistics on population, life expectancy, literacy and fertility rates, access to safe water, and obesity. A fascinating volume for browsing, What the World Eats will be useful for students in classes ranging from world cultures to economics to math to geography to current events.-Joyce Adams Burner, Hillcrest Library, Prairie Village, KS