What the World Eats

[bandgeek]

What the World Eats, a Time photo essay by Peter Menzel, excerpted from his book Hungry PlanetEach photo shows one of fifteen families with their food for a typical week laid out in their living room/area, tells what they paid for it, and tells their favorite food or family recipe

Comments

[bandgeek]

I agree that it plays into some stereotypes, but when you've got one family per country, and not even every country represented, that's gonna be hard to avoid. I suppose it's best if we just try not to think of each family as representing their country, and more of them just as individual portraits. (Although I'll admit that that isn't my initial instinctive reaction.)

Heheh, we have Pringles here, but no Doritos or Cheetos. Those are what I really miss. Mmm, fake cheese. There are, however, a lot of paprika-flavored potato chips that I've come to like, and I know I won't be finding those back in the States.

I suppose I may have come off wrong on the Ecuador thing; I agree with you. Mostly, my reaction is, what sort of materialistic, overfed, privileged asshole am I, that I have all this and think it's not enough to be happy? Whereas you have this family who is -- I argue -- underfed, at the very least in terms of the apparent lack of variety in their diets -- and looks so incredibly happy. I don't mean to say that their lives would be better if they ate like, say, the American families, but clearly they are impoverished, and they're smiling anyway. I have a lot of respect for that.

You have a good point in that part of their happiness probably comes from the hard work and dignity of producing their own food, and in working so damn hard for it that if I went to live with them I'm sure I would wimp out.