• Material World: A Global Family Portrait
• Hungry Planet: What the World Eats
• The Way We Work
• The Hunger Games
• Brisingr (Inheritance, Book 3)
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• Arts & Photography - Subjects - Books - General
• Arts & Photography - Subjects - Books - General AAS
• Science, Nature & How It Works - Children's Books - Subjects - Books - Diet & Nutrition
• Social Sciences - Nonfiction - Subjects - Books - Cultural
• Nonfiction - Subjects - Books - Human Geography

A Letter From the Authors

Traveling to a country to research what people eat is a fabulous way to understand it. Even better is traveling to a lot of countries to compare and contrast what people eat and why. That's what we did in What the World Eats. The centerpiece of our coverage in each of 21 countries is a photographic portrait of a family with one week's worth of food. One of the best parts of the book are the grocery lists that we compiled to show exactly what each of our families were buying. We list brand names and food amounts as well, as it's interesting to see how certain brands are incredibly well-traveled.

In some countries we covered more than one family. In China, for instance, we included both a rural farming family, the Cuis, and an urban one, the Dongs, who live in Bejing. The two families' eating habits are very different. The Dongs shop in a modern supermarket for the same types of foods that one might find in the United States, and use convenience foods. The Dongs eat in restaurants occasionally and their son loves KFC. The Cuis, conversely, have never tasted fast food, and always eat at home. They buy their food from small shops and outdoor markets as the Dongs used to before China began to modernize. If you look at both of their photographs, both have fresh foods in abundance, but there are many branded items on the Dong's table, and only one in the Cui's week's worth of food. The Dong's table looks more like that of one of our three American families covered in the book.

In every chapter we include details of our discussions with the families about their lives and circumstances. We traveled to a refugee camp in Chad to spend time with sixteen-year-old Abdel Karim Aboubakar and his mother and siblings.The Aboubakar's are one of thousands of Sudanese families from Darfur displaced by the genocide taking place in their home country. They escaped over the border to avoid being killed and now live in refugee tent cities. His family's food consists of grain porridge, some dried vegetables, and water—all supplied by the United Nations and its member countries.

It's interesting to watch children with this book in their hands. It doesn't require being read from front to back and they don't approach it in that manner anyway; they're drawn in by the food portraits and begin immediately to compare themselves to what they see. Afterward they go back to fill in information. What the World Eats is meant to get kids thinking about the world around them, but also about the food on their own plates. The U.S. Center for Disease Control reports that one in every three children born in the year 2000 will develop type 2 diabetes at some point during their life, and that more than 60 percent of American adults, and 30 percent of children are overweight or obese. This in one of the richest, most powerful countries on the planet; we are eating ourselves to death, but we can do something about it if we understand the problems. This book aids that understanding.

Faith D'Aluisio & Peter Menzel