Books: What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets

Who eats more, a Namibian trucker or a British mom? Authors Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio circle the globe to document the meal truth.

Photo: Peter Menzel

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The photographer/writer team behind Hungry Planet continues its engrossing examination of everyday life by presenting 80 people from 30 countries photographed with a typical day’s food. Their subjects run the nutritional gamut, from a Maasai herder who survives on 800 calories a day, to a Chinese video-gamer who lives on green tea and takeout, to an Egyptian camel broker (shown here) who gets his 3,200 calories from goat-meat broth, rice, and feta cheese. (Worldwide, the average person consumes about 2,800 calories a day.) Surprisingly, Americans don’t dominate the caloric stratosphere here: Bumping out an Illinois ironworker (6,600 calories) are a Namibian trucker (8,400 calories) and a British mom who packs away 12,300 calories of sweets and bacon.


If you buy a book using a Bookshop link on this page, a small share of the proceeds supports our journalism.

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate