[keekles]

Peter Menzel, author of Material World, photographs some families from different countries displaying 1 week worth of food in this Time photo essay:
What the World Eats.

Makes you wonder how they (and all of us) are going to manage beyond the Peak.

[snowshoegal]

Great photo essay. Lots of packaged food, of course. Didn't realize it was so bad, though. So much soda, too.

The Ecuador family made me smile. Some of those families look so unbearably unhappy amidst all the plenty. Is it a cultural thing to look glum? Do you think he set it up that way?

[keekles]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('snowshoegal', 'T')he Ecuador family made me smile. Some of those families look so unbearably unhappy amidst all the plenty. Is it a cultural thing to look glum? Do you think he set it up that way?

[Twilight]

Saw many of those photos in the Guardian Weekend magazine a few years back. The energy intensiveness just leaps out at you. Those packaged food people will be screwed. Unless they arrange things such that they become unpackaged food people, and the existing ones die. Bit of both, probably, depending on location. That'll be one of the great contests of the age.

[Bas]

from this essay it seems to me that people in moderately developed countries like egypt and Mexico eat the healthiest; the most veggies and the least fast food. Of course this was not a scientific survey.

[Twilight]

That's probably about right. You can see two extremes there, the rich who eat salted, sugared, fatty foods, and the poor who depend on just a handful of crops for their entire diet. Variety and low energy subsidy is the place to be.

[jupiters_release]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Twilight', 'T')hose packaged food people will be screwed. Unless they arrange things such that they become unpackaged food people, and the existing ones die.

[Twilight]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jupiters_release', 'H')ow many of the families eating fresh food do you think are growing it themselves? Isn't everyone screwed?

[DoubleD]

It's not just packaging and outside preparation (premade and/or fast food) that jumped out at me - did you also notice how much of the food was not "native" for the more developed country families? They no longer eat what is grown naturally in their own environment - but rely with little exception on foods that are clearly grown thousands of miles away.

In contrast, the more simple foods of the moderate to low developed nations had a much larger proportion of native grown foods - in some cases everything was obviously native.

Interesting photo essay - thank you for posting it. It reminds me of a picture essay I saw once showing what a typical family "owns" by way of possessions. The families stood in front of their home and had all their possessions out in the front yard area with them - including their kitchen food stuffs. It was most enlightening about the consumer nations as contrasted to those that were "less developed".