Americans are feeling the pinch of rising food prices due to our suffering economy, but the American dieting habits, and level of food consumption is very different from those of people around the world according to the 2005 book called, “Hungry Planet: what the world eats” by photographer Peter Menzel and writer Faith D’Aluisio. The prices that are shown are reflected in U.S. dollars and do not reflect today’s costs, but are definatly an interesting comparison of our world and the American diet habits.

In the book, “Hungry Planet” , they talk about several families and their diet habits. It amazes me how different people around the world live and especially eat. I personally ate about four or five slices of pizza just a few hours ago and am already hankerin’ for a little snack.

The first family and diet habits they discuss are the Browns of Riverview, Australia, a suburb of Melbourne. They show pictures of the family and how much food they eat and its value for a week which happens to be $376.45. They have seven people eating there when they are all home.

The next family from our Hungry Planet is the Nalim and Namgay (it is not a custom to have a family name in Bhutan). Their week’s worth of food purchased is valued at a astounding $5.03. They are a hard working farm family and I don’t know about you but I use five dollars or more A DAY not in a week!

This next families dieting habits are a bit more like my families. They are the Revis and their sons. I don’t spend near this much in a week but hey, I like my bargains:) The Revis are from Raleigh N.C. with one weeks grocery bill reaching $341.98. After seeing all their food out at once and value they promised to cut back and make much better and healthier food choices.

The last family that I am going to tell you about is the Natomo family from Kouakourou, Mali with their food worth $26.39. They have a lot of family staying in one household consisting of two wives, ten children and a couple of other relatives. They eat mostly food made out of grain and vegetables that are air dried.

Now just to throw it out there I spend about fourty to fifty dollars a week on food and that is plenty for us. I like to think our dieting habits are not to bad. Only a pizza binge and a cookie here and there. I do try to keep things fairly healthy over here. I do recommend you take a look at this book “Hungry Planet” because it puts your life in a better prospective and hopefully inspire you to do something good with the money you may save if you choose to cut back. Happy eating to all of you out in the world.

What are the smallest birds in the world? Well, the absolute smallest birds in the world would be the hummingbirds. To be more specific the bee humming bird(Mellisuga helenae). But what is this world coming to? Will these small birds