what the world eats

I first saw these photos while I was between students and checking the news on a web site. I work with “at risk” high school students and many are from low income families. They compare themselves not only to other students, but to what they see on TV, which I think is even more damaging. When my next student arrived, I showed him the pictures and he was amazed at the limited variety of foods some of the families consumed. We talked about what people in other countries lived without and the difference between “wants” and “needs”. Because I have the similar book where families are shown with all their possessions outside of their houses, I was not surprised by these photos. I have now ordered this book for my classroom library. It’s a good reality checkpoint.

I believe this was done by CNN a couple of years ago?

I absolutely LOVE these series! They’re such a harsh but true way to face reality!!!!

That said, I’m almost ashamed of the people they picked for germany and italy.. living close to the german border and having an italian family myself, I can’t really identify with their diet.. or at least the quantity of food they’re buying..

I love how the amount of food will stay somewhat stable in most pictures, but the family sizes differ so much. 12 people in Egypt eat about as much as 5 americans? wow!

Great reality check, great series….
Greetings from the netherlands!

It’s hard to even tell for sure how much some families are eating. What you see in the American photo isn’t *food*, it’s packaging. The actual “food” (if you can call it that) inside the packages is probably much less, though still calorie dense. What a waste!

The Mali photo in particular looks a lot more like my idea of food.

The American picture is sad; the ‘food’ is of poor nutritional value and there is so much packaging (waste). I was surprised to see the Chinese family with so much pre-packaged food. It’s also interesting to me that there is less meat and more grains consumed as you move down through the pictures.

I think you’ll find a far greater variety of consumers in the USA–many people are trying to be more conscious of their food choices these days.

The top photo might have represented me and my friends/family even as recently as four or five years ago, but not today.

Is that a line of giant cola bottles behind the Mexican family? If so, horrifying!

My first reaction was that we in USA eat a lot of processed and junk food while other poor nations tend to eat little and most natural (and cheaper and better for them) food. Also, all them look happy, despite of various social and monetary holdings. Good for them.

Makes me ponder, how would my family look like? Maybe somewhere in middle, we just do not eat enough fruits..:-( Got to change that.

i’m somewhere between the casales (without most of the products) and the aymes. i’m like the natomo on a frugal at the end of the resupply cycle.

They’re all smiling!

OMG! In France, they eat cats!

I am struck by how much plastic is involved with the American and Chinese diets and the Mexican to a lesser degree. So much waste is produced by the packaging of grocery items.

Just a note on the last two pictures.. If you remember that the rice, grains, and beans double in size when cooked, it’ll look more like enough to feed a large family.

My first reaction to this was how the food quantity got smaller and smaller with each picture and then I looked at quality of food and how the “typical american family” had all this junk food and then no so much with china and then you get to mexico and ecuador and they’re are tons of vegetables and grains and then with Mali there was extremely little food!

If you look at the Mali family. I wouldn’t say there is extremely little food there. Three massive sacks of grains. You can stretch that out into many meals.

What interests me except for the prepackaged (egh) plastic stuff, there is very little meat shown here.

My first reaction was a verbal, “Oh Lord…” LOL – Thanks for the perspective!