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There’s nothing more telling than having it all laid out before you: the food you and your family, however small or big it may be, consume in a week, displayed on your kitchen table. That is, if you have a kitchen table.
If you’re the Aboubakar family of Chad, your table is a woven carpet spread on the ground of the Breidjing refugee camp. Set there, for the family of six, is a small gathering of rations: 40 pounds of sorghum; nearly five pounds of a corn-soy blend; nine ounces of dried goat, seven of dried fish; a handful of limes; roughly five pounds of lentils, chick peas, beans and peas; sunflower oil, sugar, salt, pepper; and water.
The four-member Bainton family, of Great Britain, does have a table upon which to place their weeks’ repasts, but it’s not big enough; they also need three small side tables and the mantle of their fireplace. Upon these surfaces rest a surplus of goods: potatoes, white bread, wheat bread; Coco Pops cereal and corn flakes; pork, eggs, canned tuna, ham, bacon, prawns; ketchup, mayo, jam, organic peanut butter; French fries, candy bars, nachos, pizza; juice, milk, coffee, tea, wine. And more and more.
It’s a telling contrast. And, in Hungry Planet, just out in paperback, it’s also a humbling, surprising, and at times, saddening contrast, one that reveals how some of us consume far more than our share.
Of course, that’s not news. By now, we’ve had it drilled into our little noggins that the Western world outpaces the rest of the globe when it comes to just about everything. Which makes it all the more surprising to learn that other places are catching up, and fattening up, when it comes to food. But being told this and being shown this: these are two vastly different ways of communicating. Luckily for us – and the planet — the people showing and telling are photographer Peter Menzel and author Faith D’Aluisio.
To do so, they hit upon a wonderful premise: to see what people, all over the planet, eat in a week’s time. No minor feat that, and to acheive such a goal, they visited 30 families in 24 countries. Their journey began on Jan. 1, 2001, when the married couple revisited a handful of families they profiled in their 1994 book Material World: A Global Family Portrait. From there, Menzel tracked down more families through friends, colleagues, translators, even taxi drivers, searching out those he thought would be representative of the country. Interviews of the families were conducted by D’Aluisio, who also did reporting and food styling.
These tasks seem Herculean, but somehow, the pair pulled it off in delicious fashion. Each family is given a several-page spread, beginning with a photo of the family and their weekly shopping list presented in its material form. A chart on the opposite page lists all food items, along with tallying their cost. (So, for example, you can see that for the Chadian family in the refugee camp, their food expenditure for the week amounts to $1.23, while the Brits’ food tab tops out at $253.15.) More pics supplement the weekly meal photo, these being interspersed with stories about the lives of the family, statistics on their home country, and a family recipe.
Some families get more booktime than others and, while it’s uncertain how those choices were made, every one seems a wise decision. Hence, we get to spend a good amount of time with the Madsens of Greenland. While the family spends roughly $275 for their weeks’ eats, the father supplements this through hunted meat worth slightly more than $220. Menzel and D’Aluisio tag along on a hunt, leading to stunning photos of Emil Madsen hunting seals and his wife, Erika, cleaning the blubbery mammal in the hallway, and descriptive text detailing a run of ice fishing that lands almost 100 Artic char. (There’s also a recipe for Greenlandic Seal Stew, if the thrill of the hunt causes hunger pangs.)
As if that weren’t enough, there are, scattered throughout the book, short essays by the likes of foodie Michael Pollan, sea-lover Carl Safina, and journalist Charles C. Mann touching upon the politics of chowing down meat, the ethics of dining on seafood, and the glory of street-food fare.
These additions only help to make Hungry Planet that much more enjoyable. Though really, credit should be given to those families who opened their kitchens to Menzel and D’Aluisio. Such willingness has allowed this photog-writer pair to cook up a five-course feast for the eyes on the importance of food to our very existence. It’s hard not to be moved while looking through this paean to humanity and view the abundance that greets many of our tables in this country.
Though, for the Revis family in North Carolina, a better word might be overabundance. When the family saw their $340 worth of weekly fare — complete with fast food from McDonald’s, Burger King, and Taco Bell — it created a change in their eating habits. Chances are, many of us might feel the same if Menzel and D’Aluisio broke bread with us, too.
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