Reading at the Table: The Hungry Planet

One of my favorite parts on MTV Cribs was when the celebrity would show the contents of their refrigerator(s). I liked to see what the super-fit athletes and the super-skinny actresses were eating. Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio's Hungry Planet: What the World Eats is like a look inside the refrigerators of the rest of the world. The authors visited 30 families in 24 countries to explore the differences in the way we eat. Each family was photographed with a display of all the foods they eat in an entire week. The book is a compilation of these photographs, as well as brief descriptions of each family's daily life. As Marion Nestle points out in the Foreword, the pictures clearly reflect that although the world produces more than enough food for everyone, its distribution is anything but equal. The photo of the Sudanese family living in a refugee camp in Chad with their meager rations is shameful. The contrasting pictures of the families in rural and urban China also show how diets change as people acquire more resources. But it's also quite a eye-opener to see how differently we eat from most of the rest of the world. While we buy a lot of packaged foods and go for the cheap, easy, fast options, people in other countries rely primarily on fresh fruits and veggies, grains, and home-cooked meals. No wonder why the U.S. is known for its obesity problems. The book also contains a lot of statistics which are fascinating to compare. While I thought the U.S. would be the clear winner when it came to obesity, Kuwait actually beats us by about 2%. What's going on there? It's definitely not a country I had pegged for obesity problems. But the U.S. has the highest rate of meat consumption and the highest sugar/sweetener supply. Aside from the food, the book also gives a good sense of how people in other countries live and what their daily lives are like. It is such an interesting read and well worth a look.