The Batsuuri family in their single-room home—a sublet in a bigger apartment—in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, with a week’s worth of food. Standing behind Regzen Batsuuri, 44 (left), and Oyuntsetseg (Oyuna) Lhakamsuren, 38, are their children, Khorloo, 17, and Batbileg, 13. Cooking methods: electric stove, coal stove. Food preservation: refrigerator-freezer (shared, like the stoves, with two other families). /// The Batsuuri family is one of the thirty families featured in the book Hungry Planet: What the World Eats. Food expenditure for one week: $40.02 USD.
Hungry Planet
USA www.menzelphoto.com
“We have travelled the world to document the diet of hundreds of individuals and families in over 90 countries. The portraits are part of our Hungry Planet Project—an ongoing effort to bring nutrition education into the lives of all. Examining the amount and cost of food typical families consume in a week, begins our collective discussion of the impact those diets have on human and the Earth’s health. Diet is changing due to globalisation, rising affluence and tides of migration, as people bring their own foods to new lands and acquire new tastes in return. These portraits represent a culinary atlas of our fast-evolving planet.” Peter Menzel
Photojournalist Peter Menzel is known for his coverage of international feature stories on science and the environment. His award-winning photographs have been published in Life, National Geographic, Smithsonian, the New York Times Magazine, Time, Stern, and GEO. He has received both World Press and Picture of the Year awards and has authored seven books, most recently, What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets, with his wife Faith D’Aluisio.
Menzel and D’Aluisio are the co-creators of several other award-winning books: Material World: A Global Family Portrait; and Women in the Material World; Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species; and a children’s version of Hungry Planet called What the World Eats.