Hungry Tracy: What I Eat 12 January 2007 2:47 pm
Posted by Tracy in : Marion Nestle, anthropology, books, eating, hungry planet, people , add a commentHungry Planet: What the World Eats is a super-cool book by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio, with a foreword by one of my personal heroes, Marion “How can a nutritionist be such a colossal badass?” Nestle (incidentally, Menzel and D’Aluisio created the cover photographs for Nestle’s latest book, What To Eat, one of my very favorite reads in a long while, but I digress). Hungry Planet won the 2006 James Beard Foundation Cookbook of the Year Award, which is a little baffling as it’s really a photo essay about thirty families from twenty-four countries all around the world, pictured with a week’s worth of food. (There’s also written descriptions of the food and estimates as to its cost, which comes in pretty handy for the mystery edibles, and to be fair there are a few recipes interspersed with the photos and other articles on a wide range of food-related topics.) Ever since I got this book from my friendly local public library back in May of last year, I’ve been planning to do a similar project about my own eating habits. My parents got me a copy when they visited in early December 2006, and I started my little food recall adventure about a week later. My measurements were pretty inexact, but I figured a rough sketch would be enough to start answering many questions (for instance: What is TracyFood?) and also I really don’t want to turn into one of those people who weighs everything she eats (my obsessive-compulsive tendencies really don’t need encouragement, thanks!) Over the next few days, I’ll be posting my “data” and thoughts about this experience. This project is dedicated to my mom, for whom there is no such thing as too much information.
