Faith D'AluisioResenhas

A companion to the internationally acclaimed bestseller Material World: A Global Family Portrait, this volume portrays a multicultural odyssey in words and images that illuminate the hopes, dreams, and sorrows of women of the world.

Fascinating!

Fascinating look at what the world eats. I was amazed by the places where they are feeding huge families on almost no money. Comparing how much pre-packaged food we eat in the US to places like Bhutan where almost everything is home grown was really enlightening. It seems unfortunate to me that our Western way of eating is seen as normal, with our tons of soda and everything full of sugar, salt, and preservatives.

Recommended by Lauren B.

Twenty-plus families from countries around the world provide a lens to examine different eating and cooking practices around the world, from a refugee camp in Chad to Mongolia, Greenland, Australia, and more. Each family is photographed surrounded by a week's worth of food; there are facts about each region, a map highlighting each country's location, many captioned photographs, family recipes, and photographer's field notes. There are also photo galleries of different kitchens, street food, fast food, meals, and fish; there are statistics on annual meat consumption, fertility rate, literacy rate, population (% urban), and area in square miles. In short, this is an in-depth look at a topic of vital importance to everyone on the planet: food - how much it costs, what kind is available, how it's grown and cooked. Back matter includes further reading, sources, and index.

This is a compelling book following up previous works by Menzel, who travels the world creating photo essays. In this collection, Menzel and D'Aluisio look at the food consumption habits of people from around the world. Progressing from least calories to most calories, they show each person or family with their daily allotment of food, ranging from a few handfuls of grains and beans to extravagant table settings. Not only does this book portray the variety of foods from around the world, it also shows the immense scale difference between those who have little and those who have much.

I loved this book. It was fascinating. The author traveled around the world and took pictures of people in their kitchens with their entire pantry spread around them and then discussed the family. Some kitchens were familiar enough - Australia, Great Britain, and even Saudi Arabia. Others were very foreign such as the refugee camp in Africa (and that was very sad)and some Asian countries. I had fun picking out the food brands I knew from the pictures (and was often surprised). Highly recommended.

I'd enjoyed their other coffee table size books Material World and Women in the Material World. Lovely photography and interesting stories about families around the world and how they eat. (May 13, 2006)

Pictures of what different people eat for a week. Nice to look at once.

Although I didn't get to finish this book, I gave it four stars for concept. The parts I was able to read and the pictures I looked at were informative and fascinating. The physical format of the book was a problem for me. It is so large and heavy that I would have had to sit at a desk or table to read it; and the glossy paper made necessary by the color photo reproduction made it hard to read. Also, some of the most interesting information was in rather small print in a shaded box, thus even harder to read. I can't even visualize how one would read this on an e-reader; a website seems like the best option. I would recommend it if you have good eyes and strong arms.

I'm reading this and Z's flipping through it.

What the World Eats is a read-aloud informational book that follows more than twenty families from around the world and their weekly eating habits. A compilation of photographs, grocery lists, health statistics and societal and cultural characteristics make this text informative and engaging. The author compares and contrasts families from different cultures to accurately depict how differently people from around the world buy, cook, consume and ration their food. I found this book to be a wonderful non-fiction resource for cultural awareness.

This informational text provides a wealth of information along with photographs about various countries and their eating habits. Students can see the shocking similarities and vast differences between the cultures of the world.

For instance, students might be quite surprised by how recognizable the McDonald's symbol is across the globe. In fact, you learn from this book that it can be found in many nations, even the Philippines.

Whereas in Beijing, China, you have easy access to street foods like sea horse and cicadas. I think students will be very interested to learn about foods across the world because eating is a universal event. They will get to learn about eating traditions that may stun and intrigue, but are completely common place for another culture. I enjoyed the real photographs of people and their families, as well as the pictures taken in the various countries.

Hungry Planet presents a photographic study of families from across the globe revealing what people eat during the course of the week.

Contains pictures from around world of families and what they eat in a week. Great comparison to student's own lives and includes facts about different countries. Great for any culture/country study.

An informative book displaying photos and text, celebrating cultural diversity around the world.

So much potentail for so many grades to show cultures and diversity across the grades. Valuable and current book that would cover many topics not just social studies but health (looking at what we eat in North America vs. families in Asia or some European countries) to environmental science when we look at how things are packaged.

A fascinating and thought provoking book that would make an excellent resource for researching and discussing global differences in health and food resources. The contrasts between the countries is astounding, particularly when looking at the photographs of a weeks' worth of food and its cost. The list of books and websites for further reading at the end is particularly good. This is a must have resource for all school libraries!

A remarkable photographic study of eating habits and diets from all over the world. The portraits of families photographed with a week's worth of food will provide readers with considerable "food for thought." The comparison analysis of the cost of food and the types of food eaten in different parts of the world is ultimately fascinating. Favorite recipes included from each family profiled.

This book is so interesting. Its basic premise is that the author traveled to many, many countries, stayed with a family he felt to be typical of the culture, ate with them and watched them shop, then photographed absolutely every ingredient they would use for an entire week, with a complete catalogue of these foods on the page facing. It's a fascinating look into other cultures - how similar they can be, and how different, from your own. There's another neat one, also by Peter Menzel, called Material World, where he did a similar thing, a photographic catalogue of a family's life. But the photography in this one is better. In MW, the pictures are taken from so far away that it is slightly difficult to see detail, and that detail, for me, was what made this one so interesting, like being able to momentarily step into another country and browse someone else's life. Like traveling, without the expense of airfare - you really feel like you know a place when you know what they eat.

Beautiful photos, humbling concept. Do we really eat that much abundance?

Quite possibly my favorite book. Menzel captures the eating habits of statistically average families from countries around the world by taking photos of what the families eat for one week. He puts ALL the food on a table in front of the family, which makes for stunning photography.

Menzel shows us the world's people and the world's problems by showing us the world's food. We see the starving refugees in Chad, surviving of UN ground mush. We see the American diet filled with pizza and soda. We see two families from China and the differences between urban and suburban life, reflecting globalization.

This book could be used across the curriculum--in Math, children can compare statistics of diabetes or calorie consumption. In Social Studies, children can learn about the lifestyles of different countries. Hungry Planet can be used to discuss current events or to learn about making inferences in English class. This would be an ideal book for a Health or Nutrition class.

When used in a sixth grade classroom, my students felt great appreciation for what they had to eat and became activists in the fight to end global hunger. This is an amazing teaching tool that can be used for middle school-college classrooms.

eye opening, with gorgeous photos and interesting commentary.

As a coffee table book, What the World Eats was an interesting look at eating habits around the globe, but it was rather stereotypical (and ultimately geared toward telling Americans how poorly we eat).

The pictures of families from around the world with their week’s worth of food and the short accounts of their eating habits were interesting. In the end, however, I felt Menzel’s book was forcing a social problem on the reader, and it seemed to further contribute to stereotypes of eating habits around the world. Because Menzel represented each country with just one apparently randomly selected family (with a few exceptions), it seemed to reinforce stereotype rather than build any understanding of the world’s eating habits. Further, Menzel seemed to set out to prove that a lifestyle of fast food and processed food, the stereotypical lifestyle of Americans, is bad. Does any one argue with that? Every statistic and story he shared seemed to support his argument, rather than allowing the readers to make our own determinations about world eating habits.

Between the stories, Menzel did provide statistics for the represented countries relating to average caloric intake, average sugar consumption per person per year, and other food-related statistics. This was a nice touch, and I may have appreciated it more if I hadn’t felt Menzel was trying to force his message through the accompanying stories.

Menzel’s stereotypes may be rather accurate in general. However, I felt his book generated the wrong message overall because it only built on the stereotypes rather than showing that each country has many varying ways of eating.

More detailed review on my blog

This is the kid's version of Hungry Planet: What the World Eats. It has the same photos and similar text to the adult version, so if you've read Hungry Planet you don't need to pick this one up. If you're shopping for an adult reader or an older teen, pick Hungry Planet up instead of this one. They are very, very similar.

The layout is the same as Hungry Planet: A photo of a family with a week's worth of groceries, a text list of their grocery bill, and a passage discussing the role of food in their lives. Sprinkled throughout the book are recipes from the featured families.The highlight of this book for me were all the beautiful photos. It's certainly pretty enough to be a "coffee table book."

All in all, this book is food writing, cookery, travel writing, and a sociological study all rolled into one. Half a star off for some typological errors. A visually appealing book, wonderful for a child curious about the world and its people.½

The highlights of this fascinating book is photographs of families representing twenty-one different nations surrounded by a week's worth of food. The cost of the food and many other statistics about life-expectancy, etc. are also included. Professionally tested recipes from some of the countries are also included.