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FEBRUARY 13, 2008    

Food 'round the world.

Side-by-side photo of American and Egyptian familiesYou usually need to step outside of your daily life to get a better perspective on it. That's why travel can be so rewarding.

Save yourself the airfare and take a quick spin around the world to see what people eat in a typical week by looking at pictures from Hungry World: What the World Eats, a book by photographer Peter Menzel and writer Faith D'Aluisio.

I've combined two images here to show an American family on the left and an Egyptian family on the right. What struck me as I looked at these images was how much more "real" food—fruits, vegetables, grains—you see on the tables of families from non-Western countries. Families from the U.S., Germany, and the U.K. seem to have way more packaged and/or prepared food.

Look at these samples from the book and notice the amount of food you see in front of various families. The difference between the affluent Western families and the refugee family in Chad is truly obscene. It makes me feel uncomfortable—as it should—but at the same time I am grateful that my family is not the one in that picture.

Hungry Planet book cover


See a collection of photos from the book on the FixThePlanet blog
Hear an interview with the authors, read and see more at NPR.org
Click on the book cover to buy it at Amazon.com

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