Think it’s hard enough to arrange a dinner date? Try arranging 80 of them in 30 countries over a three-year period.
That’s one of the struggles that Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio faced while writing their book, What I Eat: Around The World In 80 Diets (Ten Speed Press), which details an average day’s food for 80 different people around the planet.
And because the authors wanted to show respect to the folks nice enough to break bread, pita or empanadas with them, Menzel and D’Aluisio — who are married — chose to eat the same foods as well.
That meant eating yak "momos," a Tibetan version of pot stickers made with yak meat, in Tibet; having kudu or springbok, which are types of antelopes, with a game warden in Namibia, Africa; and some form of mushroom meat substitute with a guy in Whitemarsh, Pa., who restricts himself to 1,900 calories a day.
So which was the worst meal for Menzel? If you said the yak or the kudu, you’d be wrong.
"The meat substitute was the hardest to eat," he told AOL News. "It resembled something else. I’m an omnivore and I’ll eat all kinds of meat, but if you’re not going to eat meat, why eat something that imitates it?"
On the other hand, Menzel still dreams of those yak momos, and says part of the reason is that yak tastes close to beef.
D’Aluisio didn’t have the taste for yak that her husband did.
"I really prefer the vegetarian momos," she said. "On the other hand, he doesn’t like butter tea, but I do," she said. "It’s made from a large amount of yak butter and small amount of leaves and, as you might expect, it’s rather oily."
Menzel and D’Aluisio spent three years on the book and had some artistic battles over how to format the book. D’Aluisio wanted to organize it by geographical area, but Menzel wanted the chapters to center around calorie counts, going from lowest to highest.
He won.
"I wanted to compare and contrast the diets so that people in North America could see how their diet fits in with yak herders, sumo wrestlers and seal hunters in Greenland," he said.
For the record, the person with the fewest average daily calories is Noolkisaruni Tarakuai, a Maasai herder in Kenya, who wolfs down a measly 800 calories a day: A bowl of "Ugali" (a thick cornmeal porridge), a banana and black tea with whole milk and sugar.
"If we had shown up a few weeks later, she might have eaten one of her goats and that would have added calories," D’Aluisio said.
By comparison, the biggest eater interviewed by the authors was a self-proclaimed "slacker mom" in London named Jill McTighe, who weighs 230 pounds and averages a whopping 12,300 calories per day, including:
- Two egg sandwiches, chocolate cookies and tea with whole milk for breakfast
- A ham and cheese sandwich with 3.9 ounces of salad dressing for a midday snack
- Two bacon sandwiches and two bags of chips for lunch
- A 10.8-ounce serving of chicken with gravy and 10 ounces of creamed corn and a 7-ounce can of potatoes
- Two Twix candy bars and two Mars bars while watching TV
- Ten ounces of chocolate cake, 9.6 ounces of mint chocolate chip ice cream with two ounces of chocolate sauce and a 14-ounce lemon soda for snacks
Menzel hopes that people who read the book and see all the food that’s eaten by all the different people will think more consciously about what they put into their bodies.
"I do hope it informs people so they’ll make smarter choices about their own food intake," he said. "I don’t think people understand how much they eat — and why."
For the record, Menzel’s favorite food experiences were in Japan and the Middle East, and, after meeting a camel broker in Cairo, Egypt, he is now a big lover of camel meat.
"It’s delicious, and that’s what most of the camels are used for in that part of the world these days," he said, adding that he now considers Iranian food one of his favorite cuisines. "They do incredible dishes with rice, kebabs and flat bread," he said.
Of course, since Menzel and D’Aluisio are American, they had many discussions with people about the perceived American diet — and they were often offered food they could get back home.
"When we were in Kenya, we had a conversation with the son of the owner of a tea plantation about what we eat versus what he eats," D’Aluisio said. "He eats a lot of grains and fermented milk, and I explained how we have access to so many types of food, like Chinese and Italian.
"I think people like the idea of global food and want to taste things that aren’t typical. That’s why Coca-Cola is so popular. Many times, we were offered Coke or Pepsi even when we’d rather want what [the locals] were drinking."
The authors are happy with their experiences — and the food they tried — but Menzel admits he does have some regrets.
"We were in Greenland with a man who hunts seals, and while we enjoyed fresh char caught from the sea and a delicious ox stew, we were never able to try the seal. I was very disappointed," he laughed.
Other Excerpts from Around the World in 80 Meals
©Peter Menzel / www.whatIeat.org
Shanghai-based acrobat Cao Xiaoli eats 1,700 calories a day, including deep-fried pork chops and a hard-boiled egg stewed in salted tea.
Jeff Divine, a high-rise ironworker in Chicago, starts off his day with three breakfast bars, has two peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches at lunch and snacks on fruit cups, yogurt whips and Triscuits throughout his day before having Tyson seasoned steak strips and ready-made rice at night. He says the reason he eats so many processed foods is because he’s a bachelor and can’t cook.
Saleh Abdul Fadlallah, a camel broker in Cairo, Egypt, average 3,200 calories a day, including fried eggs and potato chips for breakfast, goat meat broth as the main course for lunch and lots of feta cheese at dinner.
- David Moye, AOL News
Source: http://www.aolnews.com/weird-news/article/authors-go-to-30-countries-to-find-out-how-different-cultures-eat/19615141
