Customer Reviews

What the World Eats

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is the kid's version of Hungry Planet: What the World Eats. It has the same photos and similar text to the adult version, so if you've read Hungry Planet you don't need to pick this one up. If you're shopping for an adult reader or an older teen, pick Hungry Planet up instead of this one. They are very, very similar.

The layout is the same as Hungry Planet: A photo of a family with a week's worth of groceries, a text list of their grocery bill, and a passage discussing the role of food in their lives. Sprinkled throughout the book are recipes from the featured families.The highlight of this book for me were all the beautiful photos. It's certainly pretty enough to be a "coffee table book."

All in all, this book is food writing, cookery, travel writing, and a sociological study all rolled into one. Half a star off for some typological errors. A visually appealing book, wonderful for a child curious about the world and its people.

What the World Eats may have a simple premise, but its images and lessons are as sophisticated as they are influential. As its premise, the book offers a glimpse of the food expenditures and eating habits of twenty-five households in twenty-one countries of different degrees of economic development around the world. Menzel and D'Aluisio photographed and observed each household as it acquired one week's worth of food and prepared meals. The book clearly communicates the extent to which families in lower-income countries rely mostly on grains and produce, while higher incomes lead to the addition of meats, dairy, sugar, fats, and processed foods and beverages to the diet. Accompanying these dietary changes along the income scale are large increases in the incidence of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.

The stunning photographs, detailed text descriptions, informative charts, and strategic visual displays all contribute to important lessons that are thoroughly integrated into a format that will engross adults and children alike. The reader is left better informed not only about the enormous variation among the world's people in what they eat, but also in their use of time and in their overall standard of living. This knowledge can make us better equipped to improve our food choices, reduce food waste, and think about productive ways to fight hunger globally.

After seeing it mentioned in a magazine article, I got this book from our local library. It is nothing short of amazing. Not only do I find it interesting but all three of my children - ages 9, 12 and 16 - have picked it up on their own to read and share with visiting friends. I'm actually coming to Amazon right now to buy it as a Christmas gift for all my relatives and one for our school library. It's beautifully photographed and very interesting. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

As a homeschooling mom to 5, we have this and the Material World book with the curriculum guides and power point presentations that open up years of creative writing and social studies and geography work.

We got this book for our 5th grader for Christmas and she absolutely loves it. She doesn't read it cover to cover but picks it up regularly, reads about a few families, and tells us about the amazing facts that she has learned about life in other countries. Both fascinating and educational for kids. We highly recommend this book for middle school-aged children.

I agree with the reviewer that said to get Hungry Planet instead if it's for older kids. But this version makes the material more accessible for younger children. Food offers a concrete way to relate to other cultures. The photos of families with a week's worth of groceries bring out cultural differences and make differences in affluence vivid and explicit. When my six-year-old daughter saw the photo of one family from a refugee camp with their meager sacks of food--in dramatic contrast to the abundant array of colorful packaged foods surrounding the families of developed countries--she asked, bewildered, "why do they have so little?" (Um, do you want the short answer to that, or the long answer?) There are so many ways to compare the photos and think about differences in diet. Every photo seems to tell many stories, often surprising. The book helps children understand poverty, malnutrition, and the industrial food system, but also invites them to marvel at the fascinating variety of food worldwide, and develop curiosity about other cultures.

I had hoped for more photos, more like "Material World," but this book has more writing than photos.

I gave it to my best friend for a Christmas present. She loved it and says it is very interesting and informative and just plain fun to read.

This is one of the best books I've ever seen for children. It really gives them a sense of understanding about other parts of the world that they rarely get to see.

You can learn an amazing amount just by looking at the baskets of food families around the world buy each week. Great book! Highly recommended for all.