“How we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used,” wrote Wendell Berry in What Are People For?, his 1990 collection of essays about the individual and community. Berry is one of my heroes: a Christian philosopher-farmer from Kentucky. He’s one-of-a-kind.
Sierra Magazine, published by Sierra Club, features a series of articles this month on how the world looks at food. You don’t have to agree with the Sierra Club’s politics and aims to get useful information from these articles. They include:
- “Cheap Food Nation” by Eric Schlosser (author of Fast Food Nation). “Americans spend a smaller percentage of their income on food than anyone else, but it costs us dearly.”
- “Produce to the People” by Constance Matthiessen and Anne Hamersky. “Community gardens and farmers’ markets challenge convenience stores and fast-food joints.”
- “From Cotten to Collards” by Mark Winne. “To combat obesity, Alabama turns to farmers’ markets.”
- “Ten Ways to Eat Well” by Bob Schildgen. Ten food commandments (that tend toward the “green” side of things).
- “Secrets of the Supermarket” by Paul Rauber. “Navigating the health claims, environmental woes, and marketing myths of a modern grocery store.”.
- “Truth in Labeling” by Jennifer Hattam. “Everyone’s making food claims these days. Here’s a guide to all those seals and symbols.”
- “Home Cooking” by Gary Paul Nabhan. “A radical proposal for really local eating.”
- Discussion questions for Michael Pollan‘s recent The Omnivore’s Dilemma. (Which I mentioned previously.)
I found the last page of the magazine most interesting of all. It simply features four photographs of families from different countries, each displaying a week’s worth of food.
![[photo of Guatemalan family with a lot of fresh produce]](http://www.getrichslowly.org/images/sierraguatemala.jpg "the Mendozas of Todos Santos, Cuchumatan, Guatemala")
![[photo of American family with a lot of pre-packaged food]](http://www.getrichslowly.org/images/sierracalifornia.jpg "the Cavens of American Canyon, California")
![[photo of Chinese family with a variety of produce and packaged food]](http://www.getrichslowly.org/images/sierrachina.jpg "the Dongs of Beijing, China")
![[photo of Malian family with a variety of grains]](http://www.getrichslowly.org/images/sierramali.jpg "the Natomos of Kouakourou, Mali")
These photographs are from the book Hungry Planet: What the World Eats by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio.
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I highly recommend Hungry Planet as well as Material World which is similar to HP except that it looks at each family’s collection of material possessions and standard of living.
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Great links – Thanks for sharing. I also highly recommend the blog The Ethicurean: http://www.ethicurean.com/
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That’s great stuff. I too recommend Material World, that was the first thing that really opened my daughters eyes to the excesses we have.
I also highly recommend Wendell Berry. He’s one of my all time favorites and both his fiction and non-fiction have a lot to say about the general state of the economy and what it means to have enough.
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the images do really speak for themselves. it’s unbelievable, the amount of artificially produced food (look at all the cereals and microwavable foods!) the american family consumes compared to the rest. contrast them to the comparatively small amount of food the african family consumes(which is much larger family as well). it really does boggle the mind, and now i’m making all sorts of mental notes about my own diet. this was a great post.
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Can I just be the first to say: “lol, dongs”.
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