| Hungry Planet: What the World Eats |  | Authors: Peter Menzel, Faith D'Aluisio
Publisher: Material World
Category: Book
List Price: $24.99
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Seller: BRILANTI BOOKS
Rating:  52 reviews
Sales Rank: 31,412
Media: Paperback
Pages: 287
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.9
Dimensions (in): 12 x 8.5 x 1
ISBN: 0984074422
Dewey Decimal Number: 770
EAN: 9780984074426
ASIN: 0984074422
Publication Date: September 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
It's an inspired idea--to better understand the human diet, explore what culturally diverse families eat for a week. That's what photographer Peter Menzel and author-journalist Faith D'Alusio, authors of the equally ambitious Material World, do in Hungry Planet: What the World Eats, a comparative photo-chronicle of their visits to 30 families in 24 countries for 600 meals in all. Their personal-is-political portraits feature pictures of each family with a week's worth of food purchases; weekly food-intake lists with costs noted; typical family recipes; and illuminating essays, such as "Diabesity," on the growing threat of obesity and diabetes. 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. It's a wonderful and worthy feat. --Arthur Boehm
Product Description
The age-old practice of sitting down to a family meal is undergoing unprecedented change as rising world affluence and trade, along with the spread of global food conglomerates, transform eating habits worldwide. HUNGRY PLANET profiles 30 families from around the world--including Bosnia, Chad, Egypt, Greenland, Japan, the United States, and France--and offers detailed descriptions of weekly food purchases; photographs of the families at home, at market, and in their communities; and a portrait of each family surrounded by a week's worth of groceries. Featuring photo-essays on international street food, meat markets, fast food, and cookery, this captivating chronicle offers a riveting look at what the world really eats.
The paperback edition of the 2006 James Beard Book of the Year featuring a photojournalistic survey of 30 families from 24 countries and the food they eat during the course of one week. Winner of the 2006 James Beard Award for writings on food, finalist for the 2006 IACP Cookbook Award for food reference/technical, and winner of the 2005 Harry Chapin Media Award. Includes more than 300 photographs plus essays on the politics of food by Marion Nestle, Michael Pollan, Charles C. Mann, Alfred W. Crosby, Francine R. Kaufman, Corby Kummer, and Carl Safina. The hardcover edition has sold 40,000 copies.Awards
2006 James Beard Cookbook of the YearThe Splendid Table Book of the Year
2005 Harry Chapin Media Award
finalist for the 2006 IACP Cookbook Award
Reviews"The photos are at once charming and astonishing in their honesty."—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel“A treasure trove of information . . . The photographs alone are worth the price of admission.”—Travel Girl“Arresting, beautiful, enlightening and infinitely human, this is a collection of full-page photos of families around the world surrounded by what they eat in a single week -- from Bhutan to San Antonio. Read the illuminating statistics and the essays. This is a book for the family and for the classroom. You won't see the same old "aren't we better than them" attitude, nor will you be shamed. This book reminds us that what we eat is the simplest, yet most profound, thread that ties us together.”—Lynne Rossetto Kasper, Host of American Public Media's Public Radio Program, The Splendid Table.“the politics of food at its most poignant and provocative. A coffee table book that will certainly make coffee interesting.” –Washington Post“While the photos are extraordinary--fine enough for a stand-alone volume--it's the questions these photos ask that make this volume so gripping. This is a beautiful, quietly provocative volume.” -Publishers Weekly, starred review“This book of portraits reveals a planet of joyful individuality, dispiriting sameness, and heart-breaking disparity. It's a perfect gift for the budding anti-globalists on your list” -Bon Appetit“[A] unique photographic study of global nutrition” –USA Today“Grabs your attention for the startlingly varied stories it tells about how people feed themselves around the world. Its contents are based on detailed research, beautifully photographed, presented with often disturbing clarity.” -Associated Press"The world's kitchens open to Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio, the intrepid couple who created the series of books called Material World.... As always with this couple's terse, lively travelogues, politics and the world economy are never far from view." -New York Times Book Review “illuminating, thought-provoking, and gloriously colorful” –Saveur magazine“Richly colored and quietly composed photographs....Hungry Planet is not a book about obesity or corporate villains; it's something much grander. Its premise is simple to the point of obvious and powerful to the point of art.” -Salon.com“A fascinating nutritional and gustatory tour.” -San Jose Mercury News“A grand culinary voyage through our modern world...a lushly illustrated anthropological study.” -San Francisco Bay Guardian“The talked-about book of the season...the stories are fascinating.” -Detroit Free Press“Unique and engaging” –Delta Airlines Sky magazine
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 52
Hungry Planet August 26, 2010
M. Reynard (Montana)
This was a very fascinating book. Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio make a good pair in putting their talents together and creating this masterpiece of food marvel. The main point of the book is to track the weekly food intake of families from all over the world, but goes in to much more than that.
The main focus of this book is on the families within it. They range from three people to over a dozen and the amount of food they go through in a week. The variety includes families from Kuwait, Greenland, USA, Italy, and many other countries. Some countries, like the USA and Australia, have multiple families representing them.
For each family there is a large picture of all of them surrounding the groceries they get in a week. To go with this there is usually a caption explaining who's who and sometimes what their favorite meal is. On the adjoining page the groceries are listed by type and weight and notated if they were grown by the family or not. It also lists things not pictured in the photograph. Usually on this page to a story about the family is presented and what their living situation is. The following pages include food preparation, information about the country, a recipe or two, and other pictures of the family and area. Some families have more space than others but there's usually at least four pages of information on each one.
In between these parts on the families are articles and excerpts taken from other writers on social food issues. This can range from overfishing to diabetes and other health concerns. These usually have a couple pages of associated pictures to go along with them as well. I.E. in the article about fish populations there were two pages with pictures of different kinds of seafood and the place the picture came from.
In the back of the book is an afterword, methodology, further reading section, statistics, sources, contributors, and acknowledgements.
Now into the gritty part of the book. Some of these pictures and stories are extremely sad. When you look at the refugees food supply in Chad its alarmingly low. Even though they are not starved, there is not a lot of variety and what they do have is usually grain and water. Compare this to the family in N. Carolina who has mounds of soda, beer, pizza, and other takeout and you reach a new kind of sad (luckily in the caption for this one the family saw the problems as well and vowed to change their eating habits). The stories in this book can be somewhat alarming as well. Having just read about a forced marriage for a 14 year old girl in a polygamous sect here in the USA and how it was horrible for her, it was hard to see a family in which the wife had her first child at 14 or another family with two wives without having preconceived notions. Despite this, I tried to distance myself from these thoughts and focus on the subject of the book; food.
One thing the reader should be warned about that is that the writers have very strong opinions on different things, and don't have any problem expressing them. If you disagree with articles on over-fishing, the horribleness of fast food and like-diets, the destruction of local food, and other such ideas, this may not be a good book to read. I found everything very informative however, and as long as you can keep an open mind and view everything from all angles, there shouldn't be a problem. The writing itself was more factual than emotional and while there were a few emotions included in, these were usually taken straight from the family.
The pictures in this book were great. They were exceptionally taken and helped show all parts of life for these people. Most specifically they were detailed enough to see the food clearly and determine what was what on the table. As a warning, there are some scenes of butchered animals or guinea pigs roasted whole; this could be bad for the more squeamish readers. On another note, everyone in the pictures seemed happy, which to me is the most important thing in the book.
Usually I like to just mention the content of a book rather than such things as print size, book size, etc., but I do think there's some aspects of this book worth mentioning. It is a large heavy book that is a rectangular awkward shape. The result of this, plus the fact that the print was tiny, made it hard to comfortably read. That said, it was a book worth the neck and backache.
Overall seeing the pictures and reading the stories was an eye-opening experience for me. Not only was it interesting, it also gave me a different perspective on how life is in other countries. Having never traveled myself but always having loved food from other countries, I plan on trying a couple of the recipes included in the book to see if I can have a vicarious experience of traveling through the food. This is a book I'd probably keep in my home library and read with my future kids. There's a wealth of knowledge between the covers.
Hungry Planet
Copyright 2005
287 pages
Great for kids AND adults -- and for YOU! March 31, 2010
silkandcotton (Massachusetts, USA)
This book is one I saw in the library during a Cunard cruise, and just HAD to get for myself. I also purchased copies for each of my retired neighbor couples to enjoy with their grandchildren.
My Favorite Book February 28, 2010
Matthew Kane (Raleigh, NC)
I don't make a habit of contacting authors after I read their book, but last night I finished Hungry Planet and it was simply the best book I've read in my 50 years. Fascinating photos backed up with captivating narrative. I feel like I've traveled the world, met dozens of families and enjoyed a peek into their life all while sitting on my couch. It never occurred to me we could learn so much about people by learning about their diet. Yet by focusing on diet, we then learn how they shop and how individuals become a family in the process of food preparation.
You two make a pretty wonderful team.
I would give it ten stars if I could October 25, 2009
M. Godon
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Menzel, a photographer, and D'Aluisio, who authors the text that accompanies Menzel's photography and happens to be his wife, spent a week each with thirty families in twenty-four countries. At the end of that week, Menzel and D'Aluisio paid for each family to buy an average week's worth of groceries. Each family poses with their food in their home, such as it is, and the book provides a grocery list in addition to a few pages about the family. The families vary greatly in size (both the size of the individual members and the number of family members), location, and wealth, from a family of six refugees in Chad (the total street value of their UN rations for one week: $1.23) to a family of four in Germany (total food expenditures for the week: $500.07) and many other places (including a hunting family in Greenland, which I found particularly interesting, as well as Bhutan, Bosnia, Guatemala, and - of course - the United States). D'Aluisio doesn't pass judgment on any of the families for what they eat, but it's difficult not to notice that, for example, the family from Guatemala eats almost all whole grains, fruit and vegetables, or that fifteen people in Mali eat significantly less than even a family of five in Mexico. My only complaint would be that I think the essays interspersed in the text distract from the book itself, even though I agreed with the topics in the essays. Highly recommended.
SO COOL. September 25, 2009
Anne Ruthstrom (Austin, TX)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
What a cool book! I had to have it for an Economic Geography class and it is just the coolest. It shows families around the world with a weeks worth of their food, and they talk about their lives, eating habits, what they used to eat and how that's changed. It also has recipes for each family, a REAL eye opener. All my roomates were jealous...
Showing reviews 1-5 of 52
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