On the banks of Mali's Niger River, Soumana Natomo and his family gather for a communal dinner of millet porridge with tamarind juice. In the USA, the Romayne-Caven family enjoys corndogs-on-a-stick with a tossed green salad. This age-old practice of sitting down to a family meal is undergoing unprecedented change as rising world affluence and trade, along with the spread of global food conglomerates, transform diets worldwide.

In Hungry Planet, the creative team behind the best-selling Material World, Women in the Material World, and Man Eating Bugs presents a photographic study of families around the world, revealing what people eat during the course of one week. Each family's profile includes a detailed description of their weekly food purchases; photographs of the family at home, at market, and in their communities; and a portrait of the entire family surrounded by a week's worth of groceries. To assemble this remarkable comparison, photojournalist Peter Menzel and writer Faith D'Aluisio traveled to 24 countries and visited 30 families from Bhutan and Bosnia to Mexico and Mongolia. The resulting series of photographs and facts is a 30-course feast of visual and quantitative information.

Featuring essays on food by Marion Nestle, Charles C. Mann, and Alfred W. Crosby, and photo-essays on international street food, meat markets, fast food, and cookery, this captivating chronicle offers a riveting look at what the world really eats.