As a coffee table book, What the World Eats was an interesting look at eating habits around the globe, but it was rather stereotypical (and ultimately geared toward telling Americans how poorly we eat).

The pictures of families from around the world with their week’s worth of food and the short accounts of their eating habits were interesting. In the end, however, I felt Menzel’s book was forcing a social problem on the reader, and it seemed to further contribute to stereotypes of eating habits around the world. Because Menzel represented each country with just one apparently randomly selected family (with a few exceptions), it seemed to reinforce stereotype rather than build any understanding of the world’s eating habits. Further, Menzel seemed to set out to prove that a lifestyle of fast food and processed food, the stereotypical lifestyle of Americans, is bad. Does any one argue with that? Every statistic and story he shared seemed to support his argument, rather than allowing the readers to make our own determinations about world eating habits.

Between the stories, Menzel did provide statistics for the represented countries relating to average caloric intake, average sugar consumption per person per year, and other food-related statistics. This was a nice touch, and I may have appreciated it more if I hadn’t felt Menzel was trying to force his message through the accompanying stories.

Menzel’s stereotypes may be rather accurate in general. However, I felt his book generated the wrong message overall because it only built on the stereotypes rather than showing that each country has many varying ways of eating.

More detailed review on my blog ( )

This is the kid's version of Hungry Planet: What the World Eats. It has the same photos and similar text to the adult version, so if you've read Hungry Planet you don't need to pick this one up. If you're shopping for an adult reader or an older teen, pick Hungry Planet up instead of this one. They are very, very similar.

The layout is the same as Hungry Planet: A photo of a family with a week's worth of groceries, a text list of their grocery bill, and a passage discussing the role of food in their lives. Sprinkled throughout the book are recipes from the featured families.The highlight of this book for me were all the beautiful photos. It's certainly pretty enough to be a "coffee table book."

All in all, this book is food writing, cookery, travel writing, and a sociological study all rolled into one. Half a star off for some typological errors. A visually appealing book, wonderful for a child curious about the world and its people. ( )

The highlights of this fascinating book is photographs of families representing twenty-one different nations surrounded by a week's worth of food. The cost of the food and many other statistics about life-expectancy, etc. are also included. Professionally tested recipes from some of the countries are also included.

The author interviewed families from around the globe to find out what they eat, what kinds of food they buy, and how much they spend on groceries weekly. The result is an interesting comparison between such diverse countries as Australia and Bhutan, China and the United States, Ecuador and Poland. Color photos bring the families and foods to life and Menzel aims to put our consumption into perspective. Great for browsing. ( )