September/October 2010 Issue

Books: What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets

Who eats more, a Namibian trucker or a British mom? Authors Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio circle the globe to document the meal truth.

Photo: Peter Menzel

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The photographer/writer team behind Hungry Planet continues its engrossing examination of everyday life by presenting 80 people from 30 countries photographed with a typical day’s food. Their subjects run the nutritional gamut, from a Maasai herder who survives on 800 calories a day, to a Chinese video-gamer who lives on green tea and takeout, to an Egyptian camel broker (shown here) who gets his 3,200 calories from goat-meat broth, rice, and feta cheese. (Worldwide, the average person consumes about 2,800 calories a day.) Surprisingly, Americans don’t dominate the caloric stratosphere here: Bumping out an Illinois ironworker (6,600 calories) are a Namibian trucker (8,400 calories) and a British mom who packs away 12,300 calories of sweets and bacon.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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