What the World Eats

The library did it to me again. That shelf of new books, just as you walk in, beckons me every time I enter the building. There is always some book that I can’t pass up. Never mind that I have ten books checked out already and will never get them read before they’re due; I must stop and browse. Last week was no exception and, of course, there was a book I couldn’t leave without.
“What the World Eats” written by Faith D’Aluisio and photographed by Peter Menzel is a look into the kitchens of the world (and a kid-focused follow-up to their 2005 book “Hungry Planet”). Twenty-five families from twenty-one countries share with readers a glimpse of what a weeks worth of food looks like for each household.
The families are photographed with all the food they eat in a week displayed before them. These portraits are fascinating on so many levels. The meager rations of a family in a Chad refugee camp compared to the calorie-rich but nutritionally deficient fast food diets of the US are startling. Fresh fruits and vegetables take up much of the photos from countries where the majority of the population lives on less than $2 a day. Those colorful photos look so much more appealing than the boxes and bags of processed food on the tables of developed countries.
The kitchens themselves command attention, from a rug laid on the ground next to small cooking fires in Chad, Mali and Ecuador to the large modern kitchen complete with stove, refrigerator, microwave, and servants in Kuwait.
And let’s not forget about the people. The families range in size from four to fifteen, many of them dressed in traditional clothing. Some are photographed in front of the family shrine whether it is a true place of worship or just their TV sets. Some are smiling and proud of the food they provide for their families while some look a bit embarrassed by how much of their food doesn’t really look like food.
On the page opposite these portraits is a list of the foods pictured and their cost (in US dollars), what if anything was raised by the family, and a list of facts about the community and country in which the family lives.
The facts include information such as how much residents of each country spends on health care (Mali spends $11/person, the US spends $6,096/person) and what the rate of diabetes is (Mali’s rate is 2.9% while the US is 8.8%), how many people in the country live on less than $2 a day, and in some cases, the ratio of animals to humans.
Once you can tear your eyes away from the portraits, there are short biographies of each family, describing daily food gathering and preparation (plus more good photos). You’re taken along on a seal hunt in Greenland and the three mile hike down a steep hill to the weekly market in Ecuador (and the even harder hike back home up hill with the week’s groceries). You can see the struggle of the older generations to hold onto their food traditions while the youngest generation begs for what the authors refer to as global marketplace food, i.e. McDonalds, KFC, and Coke.
There are even recipes for things like Greenlandic Seal Stew and Pigskin Jelly (which I probably won’t be making anytime soon), all of which use simple techniques and local available ingredients. For those of us who don’t have a ready source for quandong, pig’s knuckles or pimento berries, there’s a note in the beginning of the book with substitutions.
Interspersed throughout the book are charts and graphs relating to global food consumption. These are laid out on two-page spreads, one chart per page, and are obviously selected for the interesting comparisons they make. For example, the chart that shows the number of McDonald’s restaurant in each country is opposite one showing the percentage of overweight and obese populations in those same countries. The take-home message is subtle but powerful.
This book fascinated me from beginning to end. I had never really thought about the fact that Greenland is below freezing 336 days of the year or what people might eat there to survive. I was amazed that 98% of the food in Kuwait is imported. I hadn’t realized how all pervasive corn flakes, ketchup and instant coffee are. I wanted to know more about each family; the brief peek into their lives was not enough.
As I read, I tried to imagine what my week’s worth of food would look like. I wanted to believe it was like the family in Guatemala, brimming with fresh fruits and vegetables with very little packaged fare, and not like Australia and Greenland which was predominated by meat and packaged refined foods. I’m guessing it would more closely match the family from France with its wide variety of mostly healthful food, some of packaged or prepared but with a good amount of fresh ingredients.
Once I found out there was another book to this series, I got on the library website and put a hold on it. I can’t wait to read more about the food lives of these families. Now I just have to make it past that first bookshelf without bringing too many other books home.

Vicki Reich reads and cooks in Sagle, Idaho. She wonders if she could bring herself to eat pig’s knuckles, fried seahorses, or cicadas on a stick, all of which were pictured in this book. She thinks she probably could if she was hunger enough. Could you? Let her know at wordomouth@yahoo.com.