September/October 2010 Issue

Books: What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets

Who eats more, a Namibian trucker or a British mom? Authors Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio circle the globe to document the meal truth.

Photo: Peter Menzel

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The photographer/writer team behind Hungry Planet continues its engrossing examination of everyday life by presenting 80 people from 30 countries photographed with a typical day’s food. Their subjects run the nutritional gamut, from a Maasai herder who survives on 800 calories a day, to a Chinese video-gamer who lives on green tea and takeout, to an Egyptian camel broker (shown here) who gets his 3,200 calories from goat-meat broth, rice, and feta cheese. (Worldwide, the average person consumes about 2,800 calories a day.) Surprisingly, Americans don’t dominate the caloric stratosphere here: Bumping out an Illinois ironworker (6,600 calories) are a Namibian trucker (8,400 calories) and a British mom who packs away 12,300 calories of sweets and bacon.

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