Hungry Planet

Imagine laying out all the food that you eat for a week and then taking a picture of it as the husband-and-wife team of Peter Alusio and Faith Mendel have done in their book - The Hungry Planet
From the NPR Story:
"...(they) wanted to see how globalization, migration and rising affluence are affecting the diets of communities around the globe. Each chapter of their book features a portrait of a family, photographed alongside a week's worth of groceries."
Page shows poignant comparisons from Darfur, Germany and others.

I am deeply interested in how globalization, free markets affect daily lives. I am not too interested in general hypotheses about their gross ill-effects or their silver-bullet effects on the economy. Simply looking at how a basic factor such as diet is affected in the East vs. West, rural vs.urban, rich vs. poor can reveal a lot. Looks like this will be another addition to the list of requests at the local library.

Amusing anecdote
In the NPR story they talk of a family that decided to be more healthy and joined a gym. Ironically, they began to eat more fast-food since going to the gym gave them less time to cook!