Photographer Peter Menzel and his wife, Faith D'Aluisio travel around the world to answer the question "how many calories do you consume in a day?". See these interesting photos in their new book, What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets.
Name: Conrad Tolby Age: 54 Height: 6' 2" Weight: 260 pounds “Those big trucks on the road with all the lights on them? Those are chicken haulers,” says Conrad. “I used to be on the road 24-7, 300 days a year, hauling fresh-killed chickens packed in ice. I’d leave Mississippi and haul ass to California. You’ve only got so much time to deliver or you get fined big time.” After two heart attacks, both of them in the cab of his truck, and a divorce back in Mississippi, Conrad now travels with his best friend and constant companion, a five-year-old shar pei dog, named Imperial Fancy Pants, who gets his own McDonald’s burger and splits the fries with Conrad.
Name: Ahmed Ahmed Swaid Age: 50 Height: 5' 7" Weight: 148 pounds, Ahmed, who wears a jambiya dagger, as many Yemeni men do, has been a qat dealer in the old city souk for eight years. Although qat chewing isn’t as severe a health hazard as smoking tobacco, it has drastic social, economic, and environmental consequences. When chewed, the leaves release a mild stimulant related to amphetamines. Qat is chewed several times a week by a large percentage of the population: 90 percent of Yemen’s men and 25 percent of its women. Because growing qat is 10 to 20 times more profitable than other crops, scarce groundwater is being depleted to irrigate it, to the detriment of food crops and agricultural exports.
Name: George Bahna Age: 29 Height: 5'11" Weight: 165 pounds, George eats four to five times a day but doesn’t worry about gaining weight because he’s active; working out in a special room in his flat and at the private Gezira Sporting Club near his apartment. The Nile River bisects the cacophonous metropolis of Cairo, home to 17 million people, many of them very poor. Although Egypt’s stock market and gross domestic product have risen steadily for the past four years, the standard of living for the average Egyptian has not. The government continues to provide food subsidies for those in need, creating a sizable budget deficit.
Camel broker Saleh Abdul Fadlallah in Egypt is 40 years old, 5 foot 8, and weighs 165 pounds. His intake of calories on a typical April day was 3,200 kcals. His menu: eggs with butter, fava beans, country bread, potato chips, feta cheese, soup, rice, black tea, etc.
Noolkisaruni Tarakuai, the third of four wives of a Maasai chief near Narok, Kenya. She is 38 years old, 5 foot 5 and 103 pounds, and consumed 800 calories on a typical January day. She is photographed here with her day's worth of food: largely maize meal and milk.
Ansis Sauka, a voice teacher, musician and composer, rehearses with the Riga youth choir in Latvia. He is 36 years old, about 6 feet tall, 183 pounds, and on a typical October day, he consumed 3,900 kcals. Some of his food: egg, rye bread with ham, cheese and butter, chicken, potato with mayonnaise, cookies.
Curtis Newcomer, a U.S. Army soldier, with a typical day of food at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin in California's Mojave Desert. He is 20 years old, 6 foot 5 and 195 pounds; his caloric intake on a typical day in September was 4,000 kcals. His lunch consists of a variety of instant meals in the form of MREs (meals ready to eat). His least favorite is the cheese and veggie omelet.
Name: Chen Zhen Age: 20 Height: 5' 5" Weight: 106 pounds. Although she doesn’t care for noodles or rice, a special rice roll is her favorite snack: black glutinous rice wrapped around youtiao (fried bread), pickled vegetables, mustard greens, and floss-like threads of dried pork. Zhen and her friends eat at KFC about three times a week, something they couldn’t afford without the company’s coupons. Meanwhile, her father and grandparents, who live in a tiny apartment in northeast Shanghai, go without meat during the week so they can afford to share a special meal with Zhen on her weekend visits.
Name: Ruma Akhter Age: 20 Height: 5' Weight: 86 pounds, Akhter is one of over 6,000 employees at the Ananta Apparels company in Dhaka, Bangladesh. While nearly half of Bangladesh’s population is employed in agriculture, in recent years the economic engine of Bangladesh has been its garment industry, and the country is now the world’s fourth largest clothing exporter, ahead of India and the United States. Dependent on exports and fearing international sanctions, Bangladesh’s garment industry has implemented rules outlawing child labor and setting standards for humane working conditions.
Name: Lan Guihua Age: 68 Height: 5'3" Weight: 121 pounds, Her farmhouse is tucked into a bamboo-forested hillside beneath her husband’s grave, and the courtyard opens onto a view of citrus groves and vegetable fields. Chickens and dogs roam freely in the packed-earth courtyard, and firewood and brush for her kitchen wok are stacked under the eaves. Although homegrown vegetables and rice are her staples, chicken feathers and a bowl that held scalding water for easier feather plucking are clues to the meat course of a special meal for visitors. In this region, each rural family is its own little food factory and benefits from thousands of years of agricultural knowledge passed down from generation to generation.
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