I love that book. When I worked at a refugee women's organization in the US, most of my coworkers were refugee and immigrant women. I took that book with me to work and they were all engrossed in looking at it.

The staggering disparity between the haves and have nots are pretty clear.

Interesting note: the Egyptian and German families (the ones with a lot of food shown) aren't smiling. The Ecuadorian family and the family from Chad (with very little food) are. Don't think it really means anything, but something I noticed.

I am ecuadorian and first of all: we smile a lot :)
second: I have said this before in other places regarding these photographs: it is quite interesting to see the difference between the products (for example, yeah, that's three types of bananas in the front of the picture), but it should not be taken so seriously as an actual portrayal of what people in certain countries eat.
In my case, the diet of my family (middle class) would probably look a lot more like the german, italian or even american pictures and not like the ecuadorian family in the picture (clearly and indigenous family from the highlands).
So, yes, I like this project a lot, the pictures are great, but I believe that it is too deliberately random and that it also reinforces stereotypes: the pizza eating americans, the latin american indians and such.

If you consider how many people will be fed by the food with the Egyptian family versus how many people will be fed by the food with the German family, the Egyptians don't have very much food in comparison. The four Germans shown spent $500.07 for one week's worth of groceries. The twelve Egyptians shown spent $68.83. The Ecuadorian family is smaller with only nine people and spent $31.55. The Chad family is yet smaller with six people and spent $1.23. The German family of four spent about 406 times what the Chad family of six spent.

The more money is spent, the greater variety of food is possible as well as more processed food. It's easy for Americans and western Europeans to look at these images and feel a sense of pity or guilt that the people all over the world cannot eat like them. There's more to discuss and examine here than that, though.

Americans often tell one another the lie that healthy, unprocessed food is expensive and that if you are poor you must live off of prepackaged junk food. This is not the case. Legumes, grains and vegetables may be more expensive in western countries than in the poorest of nations, but they're still cheaper than buying everything in a box and still provide plenty of nutrients. A person's full nutritional requirements could be met with potatoes, milk and oatmeal, yet we continue telling one another that it's cheaper to buy frozen pizzas and that the poor must live off of macaroni and cheese and hamburgers.

These images shouldn't make a person simply look at disparity between haves and have nots and stop thinking beyond a vague sense of liberal guilt. It should invite thought and examination. Why do we believe it's better to spend $500 and get packaged foods? Why have we privileged an unhealthy, extravagant diet over a more minimal one? Why do we strive to bring others to our level of consumption instead of consuming less ourselves?

I don´t know. Some things in these pictures just don´t seem correct. I can´t speak for the pictures of the families in Chad and Ecuadir, but I remember eating a lot more bread in egypt as a kid, than is shown here - we were richer that´s correct, so I got a lot more extras than others. But bread is a important part of the egyptian diet and I just don´t see as much as I expected. Another thing I´m missing there are the water bottles. But since they spend money for lemonade - maybe they have another source for water.

As for the german family: 19 bottles of beer and four bottles of whine!? Are they alcohol addicts? Besides: My family consists of 4 grown up persons and we could never consume 20 eggs and 11 liters of milk per week! How do you do that, whilst eating all that other stuff? And how do you spend 500€ per week for food!? That´s 2000€ a month! My fathers complete net wage.

Divided between two adults and seven days, that's not really so much alcohol by western european standards. A couple of glasses of wine in the evening, a couple of beers during the day.

Yeah, though, it's the 11 liters of milk that make me scratch my head. I know Germany likes its dairy, but does this family *bathe* in the stuff?

Good grief, how does the German family go through that much stuff in 1 week? Do they really go through a carton of orange juice a day!?

Egypt looks delicious. Germany, good heavens. Are there other people hiding behind those four?

Fascinating photos!

However, as a German, the display of the Melander's weekly food strikes me as a bit... odd. I grew up in a 4 people household and even with my sister and me in our teenage years we could have lived at least 2 weeks from that amount of food. O_o
Also, you have to be at least upper middle class to be even able to afford spending more than 1500 EURO on food each month. This is utterly unrealistic for an average German family.

It's interesting to see how much the German family is said to spend on food. I live in Germany, I am by no means poor but I could never even afford to spend such amounts on food. I am still able to nourish 3 people quite well with my single income. This family shown is very far from an average German income. But people watching the picture tend to count it as an average.
I get the feeling you need to take those pictures with a grain of salt (or maybe...a lot).
I also like to comment the loads of beer & wine. It's actually 30 bottles :p (yes, you probably missed the ones right of the water bottles (Erdinger without Alcohol). I highly doubt the theory posted some comments above that in Germany most parents have their kids drinking beer/wine at home under the age of 18. This is neither a "tradition" nor anything else. We have a strong traditional passion for beer but that does not mean we drink it instead of water. I for my case usually have a beer on weekends or suchlike but...looking at this picture and reading the comments, I start doubting if I am really German...

Interesting photos, but I would love to know if there is any more background information to accompany them. Food cost, for instance, doesn't tell us much if we don't know about how much a family earns/has left-over to spend on food once other basic needs are met. It's also hard to talk about sufficient food/insufficient food because packaged and prepared food is way bulkier than an equivalent quantity of food that is dry (e.g. rice vs dried boxed soup).

In particular I wonder what the families think about their food (is it enough? is it good? what are their main food-related worries? what do they love about how they eat? where do they get the food, who makes it, and how much time does it all take up? where, and in what company, do they eat it?).

Interesting way to look at food. Have you seen the authors’ new book, What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets? It features 80 people from 30 countries with the food their day’s worth of food, arranged by the number of calories from least to most. Its more like a follow up to Hungry Planet, with a lot more food pictures from over 30 countries. TIME magazine just did a slideshow of images from the book here http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2037749_2219823,00.html.

Interesting way to look at food. Have you seen the authors’ new book, What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets? It features 80 people from 30 countries with their day’s worth of food, arranged by the number of calories from least to most. Its more like a follow up to Hungry Planet, with a lot more food pictures from over 30 countries. TIME magazine just did a slideshow of images from the book here http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2037749_2219823,00.html.

Just to clear the air... There are 28 bottles of beer and 4 bottles of wine in the German family's picture. 10 of the beer bottles are Erdinger, a Bavarian non-alcoholic wheat beer that is often enjoyed at work :p I can't account for the other 18 bottles, but I guess with two adults in the house, that evens the score with the consumption of other families in the book. For the four bottles of wine ( not whine) I guess the family is just doing its part to support their country's accomplished wine industry :)