Customer Reviews

What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Menzel and D'Aluisio write a book of caloric comparison and contrasts. Ever wonder how your diet compares with the average Maasai warrior's? This is the type of question asked by photographer Peter Menzel and his wife, Faith D'Aluisio, in their new book.

However, their book isn't merely a statistical analysis, but rather it's vibrant photo journalism. Those photographs are accompanied by insightful writing. The authors want to visually and cognitively get their readers to consider diet on the global level. There are a total of 80 diets to ponder as we see what others eat and what they don't. For example, the professional model, Egyptian camel broker, Spanish shepherd, Italian friar, Namibian game warden, Japanese bike messenger, or a British mother of three.

Why is it so fascinating to see and read about what other people eat? I'm not sure. What I do know is the diversity is astounding.

Sprinkled through the book are essays on food, politics and culture. This is the type of book that becomes a catalyst for dreaming about what it would have been like to be born on another corner of the globe. In short, it's a delightfully connecting piece of food journalism.

For slightly more than the price of an ebook bestseller, Material World publishers deliver 335 beautifully printed glossy color pages that your grandchildren will be enjoying decades from now. The content also lends itself to browsing via hardcopy and the size, about triple the area of an ebook reader, is much better for family reading.

The book would be great for discussion with children before a family dinner. For example, the profile of a Namibian diamond polisher shows her at work, at home, and playing sports with friends. The text explains how her migration from a village to the city has led to a mixed diet of traditional and western foods. The photo of "flies feasting on kapana, strips of freshly butchered beef" would be great for a discussion of how sanitary standards differ among cultures.

For those of us who can't go more than two hours without a snack, the profiles at the extremes of the caloric intake spectrum are fascinating. An apparently vibrantly healthy Maasai herder lives on 800 calories per day. An Indian ascetic lives on 1000 calories. A 160-lb. Himba pastoralist lives on 1500 calories per day and looks almost plump, sitting mostly naked with her child.

Folks at high altitude seem to need a lot of food. A 160 lb. Tibetan monk consumes 4900 calories per day. A yak herder maintains a 135 lb. weight on 5600 calories per day. Cold weather also burns off the calories, with a 170 lb. Greenland hunter consuming 6500.

I would write more but I need to go to the fridge...

The preface of this book should contain the following warning: You are about to get very jealous... and maybe a little hungry (depending upon what page you're on).

Over the 5-year evolving project that led to "What I Eat", Menzel and D'Aluisio traveled to 30 countries and discovered the culture of many different people through the foods each one ate - and shared some meals of their own as well. The journey sounds amazing, and lucky for us, it looks and reads that way too. The stunning photographs and well-written prose lift us out of our own kitchen and deposit us into those of a Spanish bullfighter, Iranian bread baker, Namibian diamond polisher, American farmer, Sumo wrestler, and Inuit Carver, to name a few.

Photographs of each of the 80 individuals profiled are shown with a day's worth of food; each item eaten is listed; and the Caloric intake for that particular day is displayed. Additional information is given about the person, including their trade or profession, age, height, weight, where they live, and details about how they live their life. The Caloric intakes range from 800 to 12,300, the latter being the intake of a binge-eater, and their weights range from under 100 lbs to well over 400. Surprisingly though, lower weights don't always match with a lower Caloric intake, and vice versa, as one would assume. This is probably due to many factors--differences in daily activity levels, the climate in which one lives, the types of foods being eaten, and most importantly--the fact that these calorie counts are only a moment in time, and not necessarily representative of what the subjects consume every day.

I appreciate the fact that the book never becomes preachy about food; it never really tells you how to eat or makes you feel guilty about your current diet, but it definitely makes you think about the amount and types of food you choose to consume on a daily basis. Through the photographs, stories, and essays by such notables as Pollan, Wrangham, Nestle, Trivedi, Collins, Young, Shell, and Berry--the book allows the reader to access the world's cultures through diet. The authors encourage us to take notice, and perhaps learn something about our personal food-culture in the process. One of the stories that made the largest impression on me was the Tibetan Yak Herder...or more accurately the Tibetan Yak Herder's wife, Phurba. The text describes how every morning Phurba wakes early to milk the yaks and gather yak dung to use for fuel, which is needed for all their cooking and heating. Her day is taken up by making butter, yogurt, and cheese from the fresh yak milk; making tea; and feeding her family. The description stands in stark contrast to life in America, where it is easy to forget heating a home doesn't always mean turning up a thermostat and that dairy products come from an animal before they were put on that grocery shelf. The book is truly eye-opening.

Considering that food is such a huge part of our lives, it's surprising that a book like this, and its predecessor, Hungry Planet, have never been published before. But thankfully, Menzel and D'Aluisio fill this very important void. So although I am still jealous that I physically didn't make the journey myself, I'm thankful someone did, and that their vibrant photojournalism captured every moment and generously shares with the reader.

A terrific look at how people eat around the world, made extremely interesting by comparing the body weight, height, daily caloric intake, and lifestyle of the people presented. The book is arranged in ascending order of caloic intake, beginning with 800 calories per day. The photography is excellent, particularly the display of what a daily ration of food actually looks like.

This is a book that would interest amost everyone. It is worthy of "coffee table' display, yet is much more important than just a pretty picture book to enjoy in one's idle time.

"What I Eat" should be a seriously studied and evaluated work in any discussion of American eating habits, diet and weight loss and/or nutrition. So much of what we read and are "recommended" is regurgitated drivel -- "folk" wisdom, new age philosophy, scolding, wish fulfillment -- that it is nearly impossible for a thoughtful person wanting to eat a healthy diet to come up with one. If it contains the "right foods" by the theories of one pundit, then it utterly violates the theories of another. Diet advice goes in and out of style like hemlines or heel heights.

Indeed, I was not very hopeful about this book in the first pages, which contain a lot of quotes by such pundits, leaning heavily towards vegetarians, vegans, crackpots ("The China Study") and diet gurus. But then it got into the meat of the text, and the wonderful and fascinating photography from the farthest corners of the world (and your neighborhood next door) and the book really hit its stride.

The biggest and most profound thing I took away from this book is despite the text commentary from "the usual so-called health experts", the typical human being interviewed and photographed eats more -- WAY WAY more -- than is recommended by typical experts. Only one participant (a nomadic herder, the first entry) had a diet of under 800 calories, and frankly that individual appeared next to starvation. (NOTE: no real attempt appears to have been made, beyond a simple visual assessment, of whether the subjects were healthy on their diets, only what the diet consisted of.)

Of the subjects who ate less than 2000 calories a day (what most diet book recommend for anyone except a very large athletic male), THREE are morbidly obese and on "diets" -- diets that clearly are not working, as they are still obese. One is a very sad girl in a diet camp, clearly not having a good time.

I didn't get keep a running total, but I'd say the average subject was eating over 3000 calories a day, and some in excess of FIVE THOUSAND (Michael Phelps, competing in the Olympics, territory) and yet -- NONE OF THESE FOLKS WERE OBESE or even overweight. Most appear very fit and healthy. Some of the subjects eating over 2500 calories a day are tiny, petite women.

Even figuring that some of these people in Third World nations work harder at physical labor would not explain their ability to eat as much as THREE TIMES the recommended number of calories: in any discussion of weight control, it is always made clear that exercise plays only a small role in weight reduction. Nor would ethnicity or culture (some of the high calorie folks are Westerners). A casual observer would say "the calorie recommendations from so called experts appear to be....bollocks."

The very last subject is highly questionable. I thinks she may have been included just to be bizarre, or to have a "capper". She is a British woman, moderately overweight (but not super-morbidly obese) who claims to eat 12,500 calories a day. Her diet, as photographed, is filled with junk food and sweets. She's basically eating more than twice as much as the biggest sumo wrestler, but doesn't weigh remotely as much. This seems to contradict common sense; I also wonder if she eats this on a regular day or just was showing off for the photographers. (It strikes me that eating 12,500 calories in one day would just result in awful gastric distress or vomiting.) Remember: the authors took people "at their word"...they did not OBSERVE anyone eating this amount, so it is possible some subjects exaggerated (high OR low) to look more bizarre or more disciplined.

I think everyone knows that human beings will, even when trying to be very honest, NOT be accurate about estimating what they eat. It's not dishonesty, it's just that it is very difficult to remember what you eat. In the case above, the subject really seems to have an eating disorder, and either was pulling the author's legs or has serious misperception of what she does or does not eat. (If you REALLY ate 12,500 a day, shouldn't you weigh more like 700 lbs than 200 lbs?) Lastly, she lets the authors know after the fact that "she has cut down" and lost 30 lbs.

In any event, this is a fascinating documentation of the immense variety among humans -- of culture, of food, of cooking, of labor, of physicality, of body types and variations. How truly WONDERFUL that variation is -- and how lame and destructive is the culture of nagging and judging about food, eating, bodies, and weight. If we truly accept DIVERSITY as the beautiful thing it is, then we need to accept the entire amazing, wonderful range of human beings -- along with their bodies and their appetites.

All people will find something to seize their interest and educate their lives in this book. It's a beautiful addition to any home too - as chapters can be read individually and the photography is superb, engaging - breathtaking!

This visually stunning book takes us around the world in 80 diets. The chapters are arranged by how many calories a certain diet consists of, along with a picture of the eater and a brief biography. Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio couldn't have chosen better subjects for their book--everything from a calorie restrictor to a citrus grower to a trucker are represented. What is ultimately most interesting is seeing the size of the person in comparison to the type of diets they eat. Those "bingers" you assume would be large, are often not, and people on restrictive diets are often more "normal" or even "plump" looking. I really want this book for my coffee table. While the pictures and the life stories keep you enthralled, the exotic foods and their packaging keep you loving the thrill of food and its ability to entice--around the world.

This has to be one of the most fascinating books you could lay on your coffee table. It contains absorbing and well done pictures along with information on how the world eats.
Eighty people were chosen from around the globe to show what they ate on an ordinary day. They range from a low of 800 calories consumed by a Maasai herder to 12,300 eaten by a British housewife. The book is organized from the least amount of calories to the most. Each person has at least a full colour page photo, some have several pages showing their surroundings and their food. Their country, number of calories, age and weight are given along with what was eaten for each meal and throughout the day, including other items, such as medicine and water. A bit is explained about each individual, their lifestyle, and their occupation. The people included are a mesmerizing range, from an astronaut, a sumo wrestler, rabbi, to a man preparing for obesity surgery.

There is enough information, in here, all of it absorbing. There are 2 tables of contents, one showing small pictures, country and calories of the person, and then one grouped with the calories, country, occupation and a world map. There is a well explained introduction on why and how this book was compiled. There are statistical charts at the end and in between are essays such as: `why we cook', `the agony and ecstasy of the calorie', `food taboos'.

This shows the astounding difference in foods eaten. It is a lesson to be learned in globalism. If you leave this out on your coffee table it will intrigue anyone who picks it up- foodies, sociologists and those interested in the people of the world.

I am so very pleased that I purchased "What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets" by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio. I was curious after reading an unusually glowing review in a major national newspaper and assumed that I might want to buy this book. I have a strong interest in books about food. In particular, I love books about eating healthy and responsibly. I also enjoy books about different cuisines around the world. But what really pushed me over the edge and made me click on that "Add to Cart" button was this: "What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets" looked like it might be a major contribution to modern cultural anthropology. I am a retired academic librarian, and a voracious reader of literature, history, natural history, biology, psychology, anthropology, and many other academic fields. I have a demanding and inquiring mind...and frankly, this book looked like something that would delight and satisfy my intellectual curiosity on many fronts. I was not disappointed.

I've learned so much about the world and myself from studying and reading this book.

It took me more than two weeks to finish it...and, even then, I did not want it to end. I slowly savored every image and every word. I can't remember when another book has given me so many exceptionally pleasurable reading hours. I will want to come back and reread and review this book many times. It may look like a gorgeous coffee table book, but it is so much more.

Food has always been an important measure of who we think we are -- and who we want to become. It is mankind's cultural center. This book makes it all come to life! We see it all in a fresh new way.

This book belongs in the collection of every academic and public library. It would make a magnificent and memorable gift to anybody who has strong intellectual curiosity about food or modern cultural anthropology. But, you don't have to be an academic to love this book; having an extraordinary interest in people is enough. This book can be examined and enjoyed on many levels...it is rich with content.

Buy a copy! For once, I have to admit that this is not the type of book you want to borrow from a library. You'll be happy that you own it. But be forewarned: once your friends see it, they will want to borrow it.

WHAT I EAT is an amazing book! Cultural anthropologists will be referring to the book 100 years from now - and there are very, very few books that fall within that category.

-Hugh Carpenter