What the world eats
on
July 9, 2007
What the world eats
When I was in college, I read what is still one of the most impactful books of my life: Material World by Peter Menzel. What was most impactful about this book to me was that it was mostly images depicting the possessions of people all over the world, outside of their homes. This made it both visibly impactful (since I could no longer ignore the huge difference between even what I owned as a scraping-by college student and what people in developing nations possessed) but also spiritually impactful, as I read about the families and how they made do with so little. http://www.sapdev.net/PMHP.html
And check out Peter Menzel's site here (where you can also buy his books):
http://www.menzelphoto.com
Well, Peter has done it again with Hungry Planet, which explains and depicts visually one week's food for families living all over the world.
I would encourage anyone who thinks they have a good idea of the way the world eats to examine this site. I encourage anyone who feels they understand the impacts of eating worldwide, the ins and outs (and risks to) the world food supply, or what true food security is going to take to examine it also. It is a sobering and enlightening look into the world's pantry.
Check out the site here:
Gregory Heller July 9, 2007
Wow! Those pictures are impactfull. Something that was both surprising and expected was how little FRESH food was in the photos of American and UK families.
I couldn't help but think of my most recent trips to the grocery store and how much I spent and what I bought. Over a lovely dinner, my friends and I were talking about food, and grocery stores (one having worked as a buyer for a food coop recently) we were discussing the difficulty of sourcing local products, I opened the NYT week in review to find an article about the "China Threat" and then earlier today on All Things Considered I heard an interesting story about food and globalization of food production, and the associated dangers of "food" products changing hands dozens of time from producer to consumer.
It seems like people might be becoming increasingly aware of our relationship to food and the sources of food production. I'd love to take a look at the Menzel book. A few friends and I have been participating in a reading circle on the topic of food and politics, sounds like this could be an interesting addition.
