The Aboubakar family of Darfur province, Sudan, in front of their tent in the Breidjing Refugee Camp, in eastern Chad, with a week’s worth of food. © 2005 Peter Menzel from ‘Hungry Planet: What the World Eats’I saw excerpts from Hungry Planet: What the World Eats a couple of years ago, and was stunned. It shows what several dozen families around the world consume in a week, and how much it costs them. The amounts range from over $500 dollars to $1.53. It’s eye-opening, perspective-shifting, and disturbing to me as an American. NPR had a segment on it awhile ago with a good sampling, see it here. It also made me realize how ubiquitous american products really are, like Coke and so on, and how it’s affected other culture’s diets.
Food is a big focus for me right now, as I’m becoming more aware of where it comes from, what’s in it, how it’s been processed, and all that kind of thing.