What The World Doesn't Eat
A follow up to our first post on the topic. You see, TUS brought the link over there, and now I’m returning the favor and bringing a TUS link back here. Specifically, this one. It’s a review of the book from which the photos were taken.
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…
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.
I think this is a point well worth making. And there is also an interesting follow-up discussion in the comments. Enjoy.
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Food, International
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Hmm, I thought the book did a good job of showing me what little the poorer families had to eat, though she is right that it should have been stated more explicitly.
The family in Bhutan always had diarrhea.
The family in Mali did not share their food with the author – there wasn’t enough to share.
Other families did share what they had, and opened up their homes to the photographer and author, but I think they noted that it was a stretch (the family in Chile, I think?)
I know that when I read the book a year ago, the quantity and variety of foods that I eat compared to people in other countries really struck home. Around that time I donated to Doctors without Borders, specifically to support the distribution of Plumpy-nut to feed the malnourished and ward off starvation.
Hmm, I guess my take on that perspective is that the author probably assumed that it is fairly well established that famine and malnutrition are bad things. It’s something humans have struggled with throughout the history of our existence (and even before). In contrast, the problem of an overabundance of food is something humans have really only had to deal with starting in the 20th century, and especially in the last 20-30 years. And while rates of malnutrition have slightly declined in recent decades, obesity is on the rise at a rapid pace. It might seem like alarmist headlines about the obesity epidemic are impossible to avoid, but even among the posters here, who are generally people who take a special interest in this topic, many either do not know or do not accept that obesity is a serious public health problem. So it makes perfect sense to me that in writing about what the world eats, you would focus on the problem that is novel and on the rise, rather than the one that has been around forever.
And also, the one that affects more directly the target audience of your book, ie English-reading people who can afford to buy it.
I don’t know if this explains the slant of the essays (I haven’t read the book), but I have been noticing lately that emphasis on the “obesity epidemic” in the news seems to have really skewed some people’s awareness of the problems of malnutrition and hunger, especially right here in America.
I followed a BoingBoing link to read more about Hungrr, a new anti-hunger awareness-raising group, and I came across comments like this:
end hunger? wtf how about end obesity?
this is hardly even an issue in america, why not go worry about the millions actually starving in third-world countries?
what we need in america is less food, not more. (here
And somewhere on my ramble ( I can’t find it right now) I read a comment to the effect that people in Louisiana are fat, and so raising money to feed Katrina victims is stupid.
I know I shouldn’t take random comments on the web too much to heart, but it seems to reflect an attitude that obesity is worse than starving, which is at least as fucked-up as the attitude that obesity is worse for you than smoking.
“I know I shouldn’t take random comments on the web too much to heart, but it seems to reflect an attitude that obesity is worse than starving, which is at least as fucked-up as the attitude that obesity is worse for you than smoking.”
ITA. I think it’s that critical thinking thing again, coupled with my suspicion that we just don’t get exposed (generally) to a lot of international analysis of starvation issues here in the States (urban and rural American poverty clearly notwithstanding). It seems to be, at least in part, what some scholars used to refer to as “isolationist” syndrome (AKA “not my problem” or NIMBY).
Chef Bourdain talks about it a little in the otherwise fairly outrageous (and I know that’s the way he likes it) “No Reservations”.
I’m not sure that I would agree that the author of this book, who devoted a couple of years of her life to traveling around the world and documenting the inequities in food availability around the world, is somehow not aware of the problem of world hunger.