rivka | Hungry Planet: the full review.

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Hungry Planet: the full review.

I promised in my January books post that I would talk in greater detail about the strong reactions I had to Hungry Planet: What the World Eats.

There's no way to not be fascinated by a book like this. Pictures of thirty different familes from 24 countries, posed with a week's worth of food - plus a detailed accounting of what the foods are; what they cost, in local and in U.S. currency; whether they are purchased, homegrown, or hunted; and what each family member's favorite is. Most of the families provided a recipe or two. All were photographed purchasing, preparing, and eating food. And there are short, largely food-and-drink-centered essays about each family.

The families chosen present interesting contrasts: the aboriginal family from the Australian outback followed by a white, upper-middle-class, urban Australian family; both of these followed by a family of subsistence farmers in Bhutan. Two Chinese families, one from Beijing and one from a rural district. A family of refugees from Darfur who are now living in a U.N. refugee camp in Chad, followed by a family native to Chad.

And there are some fascinating diets on display. Take the Inuit family in Greenland, for example: a week's worth of food includes 26.5lbs musk ox, 9.9lbs frozen walrus, 8.8lbs arctic geese, 3.3lbs polar bear, and some little auks, along with some hot dogs. The entire week's worth of fruits and vegetables for the family of five consists of 1.4lbs canned oranges, a can of fruit cocktail, a pound of onions, a jar of spaghetti sauce, and some dried mushrooms. Then there is the refugee camp family, whose 2100-calorie diet has been determined with scientific precision by the U.N.: they get 15oz of sorghum, 1/4 cup dried beans, lentils, or peas, 1/4 cup corn/soy blend, 1/4 cup vegetable oil, a tablespoon of sugar, and a teaspoon of salt, per person, per day. They work to earn a few extra cents - enough to buy a few ounces of dried fish, a few limes, a pound of onions, some garlic, dried peppers, dried vegetables, and ginger. The refugee family spends $1.23 a week on food; their rations, if bought locally, would cost $24.37. The German family, in comparison, spent nearly three times that amount on beverages alone.

The book is at its best when it lets you draw your own conclusions and comparisons. Unfortunately, there is also editorial text. In an interview, photographer/author Peter Menzel said that he decided to do the book because every time he returned to the U.S. from Africa, Americans looked fatter to him. The thesis of the book is that Third World people, given the opportunity, start to eat more like First World people do - and that that's bad. No, awful. No, an enormous nutritional disaster. The editorial text is thick with handwringing about obesity, diabetes, cholesterol, fast food, and globalization. It reaches its smuggest and most sanctimonious point in the epilogue, when Menzel lectures us about the way that he and his co-author D'Aluisio eat: "When dining out, especially in the U.S., we often order two salads, and then order one main dish to share." Whatever.

As I first read the book, I just made a mental note that, when I recommended it to other people, I should suggest that they skip over the authors' moralizing. It wasn't until I finished the book that I started to realize what was completely absent. None of the families interviewed said anything about hunger or malnutrition. None of them mentioned rationing food within the family, or having times that there wasn't enough to go around. For all the dozens of references to obesity in the accompanying editorial pieces, there was not a single corresponding mention of kwashiorkor or other nutritional deficiency diseases.

The world Health Organization says,

"Chronic food deficits affect about 792 million people in the world (FAO 2000), including 20% of the population in developing countries. Worldwide, malnutrition affects one in three people and each of its major forms dwarfs most other diseases globally (WHO, 2000). [...] Malnutrition in all its forms increases the risk of disease and early death. Protein-energy malnutrition, for example, plays a major role in half of all under-five deaths each year in developing countries (WHO 2000).

Where were those families in Hungry Planet? I suspect that some of the diets described were nutritionally insufficient, but there was no mention of that in the accompanying essays. The evils of soft drinks and McDonald's for the Western families, sure. The dangers of Third Worlders starting to eat more meat and sugar, yes. The perils of not enough protein and calories? Nowhere. Eventually that absence left (please pardon the expression) a bad taste in my mouth.

Do I still recommend the book? Yeah, but I'd be conscious of what they aren't showing you as well as what they are. It's still worth it for the Australian sheep station guy reminiscing about how all your buddies come 'round when you've got a porcupine cooking, and the two co-wives in Mali giving their advice about how polygamous families can get along better, and the 96-year-old Okinawan lady who has trouble comprehending that some people don't grow their own vegetables, and the Polish guy from Konstancin-Jeziorna who opened up a sushi bar.

And yeah, the pictures. The pictures are just amazing.

(See five of the "big picture" photos and four of the accompanying food lists in this NPR story.)

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If you're going to title your book Hungry Planet I would think that you might actually discuss the issue of hunger and malnutrition in a global context. Or so I would think.

I'll look into the book, because it does sound interesting.

Where were those families in Hungry Planet? I suspect that some of the diets described were nutritionally insufficient, but there was no mention of that in the accompanying essays. The evils of soft drinks and McDonald's for the Western families, sure. The dangers of Third Worlders starting to eat more meat and sugar, yes. The perils of not enough protein and calories? Nowhere. Eventually that absence left (please pardon the expression) a bad taste in my mouth.

My first and cynical response is that those families at risk are not the authors' demographic. Hunger and malnutrition exist in First World nations too, guys.

If you're going to title your book Hungry Planet I would think that you might actually discuss the issue of hunger and malnutrition in a global context. Or so I would think.

Yeah, you'd think. That's what gets me, too.

So much so, I think, that I won't be seeking this book out.

rivka's review will have to be sufficient!

-J

They did mention the concept of hunger a couple of times, but there were no full essays about hunger/malnutrition and - most pointedly - none of the families discussed struggling with it.

What I would really have liked to see alongside the enumeration of which foods were eaten is a nutritional analysis: how many calories, how many grams of protein, how much of which vitamins, etc. Maybe they did their research before FitDay (www.fitday.com) was invented, but they did have access to nutritionists - who have long been able to do that kind of analysis.

I would really like to know whether that didn't occur to them, it occurred to them but the logistics were too difficult, or it occurred to them and they chose to leave it out.

Um, Rivka, maybe you misremembered. Or the book is worse than you think. We don't have porcupines in Australia. Maybe he meant echidna? Different kind of beast altogether.
As I remember, the reviews of this book in Australian papers (and there was an extract in a weekly newspaper supplement) also emphasised the evils of Western eating and the virtues of third world diets. I wondered at the time how that would strike the third world interviewees

Emma

Huh. I don't know, I've got the book right here and it clearly says "porcupine." Not just in the editorial text, but in the words of the interviewees:

"A porcupine is a lot of work," says Doug. "Dig after it, run after it, clean it, hang it, cook it for hours. And just when you're ready to eat it, your mates show up all wanting a leg each. 'Well, there's only four of 'em,' I say. They start eating and soon there's nothing left." Everyone nods in agreement. "Once you have a porcupine in the house," adds Vanessa, "that's a big treat and you've got two or three families showing up for the johnny-cakes [wheat-flour campfire bread] and porcupine."

...Ah. Apparently some people call an echidna an "Australian porcupine." That must be what they meant.

It's still worth it for the Australian sheep station guy reminiscing about how all your buddies come 'round when you've got a porcupine cooking...

Where on earth did the guy on the sheep station get a porcupine from? Did the book say? If someone were to serve porcupine in Australia, I'd just bet their buddies would all come round... for the novelty factor, if nothing else! *laugh* Maybe they actually meant an echidna... not that I've ever heard of non-Aboriginal folk eating 'em, but it sounds like the most plausible alternative, assuming the station guy wasn't just making it up to take the piss out of the interviewer. Which is distinctly possible. *chuckle*

The guy was Aboriginal, and yeah, apparently they meant an echidna. Google suggests (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22australian+porcupine%22) that echidnas are sometimes called "Australian porcupines."

*laugh* I figured out that the station guy must be Aboriginal after posting the comment. However, I've never ever heard echidnas called "Australian porcupines" by Australians (beyond that rather antique usage that showed up in the first few results of that google search you suggested). P'raps it's a regional usage.

This is fascinating, especially as I'm still working my way through The First Year Type 2 Diabetes.

I just read about the interaction between genetics and environment, using the Pima Indians as an example. There are groups of these in both Arizona and Mexico, almost identical genetic pools. The Arizona Pimas used to be farmers and have a very active lifestyle until the government diverted the river they used for irrigation. They gave them government hand-outs of white flour, white sugar, and other low fiber, high carb foods, and the Pimas weren't getting the exercise they used to. Their weight soared and they have a 50% incidence of type-2 diabetes, one of the highest in the world. Their cousins in Mexico still live the hard farming life, plenty of exercise, fiber, and whole grains/low-glyemic index foods, and don't suffer from diabetes.

It wasn't until I reread this entry that I realized he's profiling a family in a refugee camp whose diet, whoever scientific, contains no fresh vegetables or fruit, in a book with "Hunger" in the title, and said nothing about hunger or malnutrition. Nor considered whether, if the family gets a ration of so much per person per day, some family members are getting more than their "official" share at the expense of others.

"You are weak, misled (or evil), and a bad example to the world" is a much more self-satisfying lecture for him to give than "two billion of your neighbors are malnourished" (even if he doesn't then discuss the roles of First World governments and corporations or what the reader can do to help, if anything). Eating salad can be satisfying on a number of levels, flavor not least among them, and lets him feel superior in public; cooking rice and beans at home, and sending the difference in cost between that and the meal out to Oxfam is more difficult.

Did those Malian women have any advice that I wouldn't already be aware of?

It wasn't until I reread this entry that I realized he's profiling a family in a refugee camp whose diet, whoever scientific, contains no fresh vegetables or fruit, in a book with "Hunger" in the title, and said nothing about hunger or malnutrition. Nor considered whether, if the family gets a ration of so much per person per day, some family members are getting more than their "official" share at the expense of others.

They do mention that the daily per-person ration is given to families to divide as they see fit, and that 2100 calories is not that much for an adult male doing physical labor all day, but way more than a toddler who is still breastfeeding needs.

I was surprised that the ration was as high as 2100 calories, actually, and by the description of how orderly and precise the food and water distribution process was.

Another interesting thing that was mentioned in the refugee family's chapter is that sometimes the rations given to refugees are better than the food available to people in the surrounding region. Then the U.N. has to supplement food for the local residents too - or else the position of the refugee camp becomes untenable.

Forgot to address the Malian women's advice in my response. Their main argument is that the husband should make sure to give each woman, and each woman's children, exactly the same material support and attention. They each have their own separate living space, but think it's important for both halves of the family to eat together regularly. And they seem to have a sleeping-together rotation.

I used to work in nutrition based child survival programs in Africa - Mali, in fact, as well as other countries in West Africa.

I would be appalled at any book proporting to talk about food and nutrition which utterly fails to mention the following indemic problems in developing countries:

* iron deficiency in pregnant women (especially in malaria zones) - I once saw a pregnant woman in Niamey, Niger without ANY blood in the lining of her eyelid. She was the wife of our driver.

* vitamin A deficiency - a primary cause of blindness and death in under 5s. Also, Vitamin A deficiency in pregnant women causes night blindness - so common in much of the world that nightblindness is considered a common condition of pregnancy.

* Iodine deficiency - linked directly to cretinism.

* zinc deficiency.

* undernourisment in the recently weaned - in Mali, young children are the last to eat - they get the dregs of the bowl, after the men and their guests, after the women and the older children. By that time, there is only rice left - no meat, no veg. The most at risk are those recently weaned - the 2 to 3 year olds.

The organization I worked for created a method of determining the likelihood of certain types of malnourisment based on the availability and frequency of certain foods known to be rich in certain minerals/vitamins - i.e. if everyone eats mangos all the time, less likely they are to have vitamin A deficiency.

While it is certainly possible to be malnourished on a western diet, the fact is that most of our food is fortified - iodine in our salt, vitamin D and C and so forth in our milk - that we rarely do see true malnourishment on the same scale. We also do not see a complete lack of food very often, except in extreme cases of neglect.

I'd frankly be afraid to read the book - I think it would make me mad. I really really hate "western is bad, developing countries are good" simplistic arguments, especially when I have seen for myself what the average person in those countries actually eats (and eaten it myself).

undernourisment in the recently weaned - in Mali, young children are the last to eat - they get the dregs of the bowl, after the men and their guests, after the women and the older children. By that time, there is only rice left - no meat, no veg. The most at risk are those recently weaned - the 2 to 3 year olds.

Yes. Kwashiorkor actually means "displaced child" in one of the West African languages - meaning a child who has lost their place at the breast because of the birth of another child. Those are the kids with protein deficiencies.

Um, I mean,

bosssio, how can you say that? Everyone knows that people in developing countries take so much better care of their children than mainstream Americans. Women in Mali cosleep! They wear their babies! They respond to their cries so much quicker than we do! Probably the only reason the adults eat first is that even weaned children still have magic extended-nursing nutrients clinging to their systems!!

...Or something. Okay, I can't keep that up.

I really really hate "western is bad, developing countries are good" simplistic arguments, especially when I have seen for myself what the average person in those countries actually eats (and eaten it myself).

Did you see the MDC thread about the adopted HIV+ child from Ethiopia who wouldn't eat American cooking, especially fruits and vegetables? Most of the people posting to the thread literally could not manage to understand, no matter how many times the mother explained, that a traditional Ethiopian diet might not be nutritionally adequate for someone with HIV. Obviously this girl's native diet must provide every nutrient in ample quantities! Otherwise, why would it be the native diet? People were even advising the mother against trying to get the child to eat American food, "because her native diet must be so much healthier." It was insane.

I'd forgotten that about Kwashiorkor - meaning displaced child - though I remember a nutritionist mentioning that to me at some point.

heh, you have heard part of my rant about the "if they do it in Africa, it must be great" approach. If it is so great, how come their child mortality rates are so high?

And in terms of "evil brutal amercian culture". Um, in Senegal, I was handed a stick by a local and instructed to beat children who were harassing us. None of the children were older than 8. When I hesitated, the guy took the stick back and started to demonstrate by hitting the kids on the head, hard (the kids ran away, of course). I don't think he even knew any of the children. When I recounted the story to other Senegalese, I was told this was excellent advice and that any adult should feel the obligation to discipline any child at any time - meaning with a stick. THIS is what the African proverb "It takes a village to raise a child" means.

I love West Africa. I love the people and the culture. However, there are many elements I would never want to incorporate into my own lifestyle.

I missed the thread about the HIV+ child from ethiopia. Wow, that would be really insane. Glad to have missed it, really. Though it would have been very very tempting to pull out some of the global health nutritional data which shows inherent insufficiencies in many diets around the world. 'course, I dunno where I put them...

I did see you on the thread about parental rights and the constitutional amendment. I was glad to see another reasonable person... : ) I admit, I lost my temper.

Interesting, though I wonder how representative these families are.

The UN-rations might be well-thought out, but no dairy, little vegetables (five limes for the whole week?) 1.4lb of white sugar and 7.4 ounces of salt do *not* sound like a good diet, and I would expect long-term health problems to arise. I don't spot many vitamines in there.

I noticed that the weekly expenses for the German Family list 'Herbalife products.' The 'extras' come to more than the vegetable and fruit section, and it's almost exclusively diet pills and vitamins...
Based on my mother's shopping and expenditure (she, too, lives in Germany) their budget should comfortably feed ten, not four. No wonder diet pills are part of the budget, though I wonder why they don't simply cut down a bit...

The lack of dairy doesn't bother me, because as I understand it most adult Africans cannot digest lactose. Their normal "non-refugee" diet would probably lack dairy. But no fruits? No vegetables? What's going on here?

I ran into something like this recently, but perhaps a starker contrast. One of my friends was visiting with a friend who was coming back from Africa. her friend told her that the Africans she stayed with, doing some sort of charity work in a drought area, told her that she was addicted to water. She went on to say that she'd broken herself of her first-world addiction and now managed to subsist on only three cups of water per day and that when she came back here and saw how much water everybody drank, it always amazed her and reminded her of what she learned from those people. The way my friend worded the story, it really seemed that she was praising this great accomplishment and feeling the guilt well up within herself for the copious amount of water she consumed that day.

There seems to be a tendency among many people, especially the strongly liberal, to assume that whatever they may have to suffer, which we can feel guilt for, third-world people, especially the seriously improverished, have some sort of greater connection to basic wisdom and a better way of living that we don't have access to. I often wonder about it. In the above example, sure water is a great priviledge and it's becoming scarcer while many people turn a blind eye. But is it an evil addiction to drink, say, eight cups of water a day? Is that gluttony? Or is that how much is healthy, on average, for most people and the real wrong here is that many people don't have access to that? So the wondering in cases like that becomes: Why do we believe that people in the third world have access to the real core of life, which we've somehow forgotten? I wonder if it's a sort of guilt equalizer to some extent -- if it allows us to feel as if we are also needy, and as if they have something we can't have.

This is not to say that there might be things about life that we can learn from the third world, mind you. I'm sure that there are many bad things about the way we live that could be reversed through lessons learned from other cultures. But this need to believe that wherever there is a contrast, the third world is somehow closer to a real, genuine human existence and we're empty -- how often is that genuine and how often is that simply a way to balance empty souls vs. empty bellies?

I have a 24-ounce cup of delicious cold water in my hand as I'm writing this response. :-)

That sounds like an example of a recognized phenomenon called "Re-Entry Syndrome," commonly experienced by returning aid workers and Peace Corps volunteers. It's like culture shock in reverse. (Some interesting comments on it are here (http://oldforum.aidworkers.net/messages/258/10930.html?1075410950).)

I think you're absolutely right on the mark about people translating guilt into a sort of uncritical admiration of the Noble Savage. It's the flip side of paternalistic colonialism, you know?

It's the flip side of paternalistic colonialism, you know?

Yup. and I love the comment:

But this need to believe that wherever there is a contrast, the third world is somehow closer to a real, genuine human existence and we're empty -- how often is that genuine and how often is that simply a way to balance empty souls vs. empty bellies?

I work in international development with an MA in Anthropology of development. This is not an easy combination since the role of anthropology is to study what is (supposedly without judgemetn) and the role of international development is to make things better, which implies a lot of judgement.

Many anthropologists are definitely of the noble savage mindset, and many really cannot stand "Applied Anthropology" - i.e. using anthropological methods to achieve some positive result - since that would be messing with the culture and we can't do that. Sometimes the justification is that we'd be making them worse, because of course, we suck and everything we touch therefore is infected with our suckiness. Other times the justification is that we are messing with the experiment (which really sets me off).

Frankly, you can cherry pick any set of practices out of any culture based on your own biases and hold them up as superior. Ditto the opposite.

I deal with baselines. Does this cultural practice result in more or less death, illness, personal freedom, opportunities for income generation, freedom from violence, etc?

Okay, be warned that I am now determined to pursue a vigorous campaign to lure you to SUUSI, so we can spend a week hanging out and talking.

I'm starting my daily 32oz of Gatorade.

But this need to believe that wherever there is a contrast, the third world is somehow closer to a real, genuine human existence and we're empty -- how often is that genuine and how often is that simply a way to balance empty souls vs. empty bellies?

I think you're on to a profound truth there.

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Hungry Planet: the full review.

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porcupine?

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