Hungry Planet: What the World Eats

Today we are witnessing the greatest change in global diets since the invention of agriculture. Globalization, mass tourism, and giant agribusiness have filled supermarket shelves with extraordinary new foods. And, in return, McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Kraft Cheese Singles are being exported to every corner of the world.

In Hungry Planet, the creative team behind the best-selling Material World books, Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio, present a photographic study of families from around the world, revealing what people eat during the course of one week. Each family's profile includes a detailed description of their weekly food purchases, photographs of the family at home, at market, and in their community, and a portrait of the entire family surrounded by a week's worth of groceries. To assemble this remarkable comparison, Menzel and D'Aluisio traveled to twenty-four countries and visited thirty families from Bhutan and Bosnia to Mexico and Mongolia.

Accompanied by an insightful foreword by Marion Nestle, and provocative essays from Alfred W. Crosby, Francine R. Kaufman, Corby Kummer, Charles C. Mann, Michael Pollan, and Carl Safina, the result of this journey is a 30-course documentary feast: captivating, infuriating, and altogether fascinating.

"Every now and then you come across a book so fresh, original, and perceptive that even people who have researched the subject for years are surprised all over again by how the study of food can say so much about the human condition. This is one such book. In creating Hungry Planet: What the World Eats, Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio did something deceptively simple and utterly brilliant: they photographed families throughout the world posed with a display of all the foods they ate for an entire week. The result is not only a set of wonderful family portraits, but also a stunning commentary on some of the most critical issues facing the world today."
- From the Foreword by Marion Nestle, Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University.

Softcover. 288 pages. 30.5x23cm. Illustrated with full-color photographs. Published by Ten Speed Press.