Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Global Grocery Haul

I'm one of those people who furtively peers into strangers' shopping carts at the supermarket. Charged with chilling the wine at a dinner party, I linger a bit too long in the cold plume of the open fridge, scanning the shelves. I get a big kick out of seeing what other people buy and eat. Weirdo! I know. But I am what I am.

A section of my own pantry. Starvin' the moths. *uppercut*

So when I stumbled across this NPR piece yesterday about a book called Hungry Planet, I was rapt. In what amounts to a global grocery haul, photographer Peter Menzel documents 30 families around the world posing in their homes with a week's worth of food.

Here's a slide show of some of the photographs, and here's another. If you haven't seen the images already (the book came out in '05), I hope you enjoy this titillating, unembarrassed and thought-provoking gander at global food traditions as much as I did.
Posted by at

4 comments:

  1. KittieJune 27, 2010 at 4:52 PM

    This inspired me to type out all the things I eat in a week. I was proud of myself, the only packaged foods are things like Larabars and Greek yogurt. I think I'm doing pretty well.

    ReplyDelete
  2. TeritaJune 27, 2010 at 6:18 PM

    That's awesome! I bet all that fresh food would look beautiful heaped together, Hungry Planet style... too bad that's so impractical. :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownJune 28, 2010 at 6:11 PM

    This is great. Looking at the photos reminded me of something similar in style that I'd seen last year while subbing. Turns out it's the same photog. Menzel's book Material World is all portraits from around the world of families in front of their homes with all of their possessions arranged in the yard around them. Really neat, too.

    ReplyDelete
  4. TeritaJune 29, 2010 at 7:47 AM

    I just looked up a couple of the Material World images--wow! Striking.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)