In the book What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets, photographer Peter Menzel and writer Faith D'Aluisio present thought-provoking portraits of individuals around the globe and the food that fuels them over the course of a single day.

    From the authors: We used a typical recent day as a starting point for our interviews with 80 people in 30 countries, which led to the final food portraits and food lists, with their resulting calorie count. We specifically chose not to cover daily caloric averages as we wanted to include some extreme examples of eating, like one subject's diet on a bingeing day—over 12,000 calories, and the 800 calories the Maasai herder in Kenya's Great Rift Valley ate during extreme drought. An average would have muddied these up and been less instructive. If the herder had eaten goat the week we'd covered her or not been in drought, the calorie count would have been higher. The texts in the book provide the context for the photographs—detailing each person's diet, culture, and circumstance. Please see the book for complete methodology and coverage.

    While we have been diligent in providing cultural context and geographic relevance in each of our stories, the people profiled represent only themselves and no one person, or even five, can represent an entire country. Please use this work to further your own exploration and understanding of the world.