‘What The World Eats’ Redux

A link to these Time photo essays came through the MPSF inbox over the weekend. Fascinating: The weekly bills range from $1.53 for the Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp, Chad, to $500.07 for the Melander family of Bargteheide, Germany.

The photos come from the 2005 book, Hungry Planet: What the World Eats, by the husband-and-wife team of photographer Peter Menzel and writer Faith D’Aluisio. An NPR story from 2005 describes the project like so:


Imagine inviting yourself to dinner with 30 different families… in 24 countries. Imagine shopping, farming, cooking and eating with those families… taking note of every vegetable peeled, every beverage poured, every package opened…
Each chapter of their book features a portrait of a family, photographed alongside a week’s worth of groceries. There’s also a detailed list of all the food and the total cost.

The resulting book spawned the two essays that strikingly demonstrate the difference in food consumption habits between the industrialized and developing worlds. Check it:



What the World Eats, Part I
[Time]
What the World Eats, Part II [Time]
Hungry Planet: What the World Eats [NPR]

‘What The World Eats’ Redux