The images in Peter Menzel's Hungry planet really show viewers the difference in accessibility to food in different areas of the world. In his photos of families and their weeks worth of food he shows a family with 2 servants and their weeks worth of food covering their table in abundance along with the family in North Carolina, where they had so much food that it was stacked all over their kitchen and they were also holding food. He contradicts this with the family in Chad that has a significantly lower amount of food for a mother and five children. This shows that the availability of food is not like the other photos. This family has very little to sustain them for a week.
He also shows the viewers the different foods available to different areas. He shows water beetles, and pig parts, and people eating grasshoppers to show that we eat what is available to us. People in different areas will see this and have mixed reactions because to Americans we would not eat grasshoppers or beetles, but people from the middle east would probably not want to sit down and eat a pizza for dinner. We are raised on different circumstances with different abundances of different foods.
I agree that we eat what is available to us. Sometimes for Americans at least, that can be a bad thing. Seeing the difference between the kinds and amounts of food we eat versus the Middle East was crazy.
ReplyDeleteI agree that we do eat what is available to us. I found that the amount of food the family from Chad had was quite depressing. At the same time, although they don't have much they take what they can get and make it work for them. I also found it interesting that almost every other country had natural foods, while Americans clearly rely on a lot of processed foods.
ReplyDeleteYou're right on the fact that when times get hard, people will basically eat any and everything that is available to them. I like how you bring up the fact that people in different countries would probably look at the things we eat (pizza), and think that's weird. I never really thought about that, because it's always easy to just think about things from my perspective.
ReplyDelete