On the banks of Mali's Niger River, Soumana Natomo and his family gather for a communal dinner of millet porridge with tamarind juice. In the USA, the Ronayne-Caven family enjoys corndogs-on-a-stick with a tossed green salad. This age-old practice of sitting down to a family meal is undergoing unprecedented change as rising world affluence and trade, along with the spread of global food conglomerates, transform diets worldwide. In Hungry Planet, the creative team behind the best-selling Material World, Women in the Material World, and Man Eating Bugs presents 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.

"For their enormously successful Material World, photojournalist Menzel and writer D'Aluisio traveled the world photographing average people's worldly possessions. In 2000, they began research for this book on the world's eating habits, visiting some 30 families in 24 countries. Each family was asked to purchase — at the authors' expense — a typical week's groceries, which were artfully arrayed — whether sacks of grain and potatoes and overripe bananas, or rows of packaged cereals, sodas and take-out pizzas — for a full-page family portrait. This is followed by a detailed listing of the goods, broken down by food groups and expenditures, then a more general discussion of how the food is raised and used, illustrated with a variety of photos and a family recipe. A sidebar of facts relevant to each country's eating habits (e.g., the cost of Big Macs, average cigarette use, obesity rates) invites armchair theorizing. While the photos are extraordinary — fine enough for a stand-alone volume — it's the questions these photos ask that make this volume so gripping. After considering the Darfur mother with five children living on $1.44 a week in a refugee camp in Chad, then the German family of four spending $494.19, and a host of families in between, we may think about food in a whole new light. This is a beautiful, quietly provocative volume." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Arresting, beautiful, enlightening and infinitely human, this is a collection of full-page photos of families around the world surrounded by what they eat in a single week — from Bhutan to San Antonio." Lynne Rossetto Kasper, Host of American Public Media's Public Radio Program, The Splendid Table

This photographic study of families from 24 countries reveals what people eat during the course of one week. Each family's profile includes a detailed description of their food purchases and their community.