Brain Food: Hungry Planet

What $347.98 and $1.23 have in common, or why we should be embarrassed to even worry about “the recession.”

It’s no secret that we’re fans of data visualization. But even the most original ways of presenting data may fail to make that eye-opening, visceral impact on us — what usually remains in the heart are not scientific analyses and cold facts but emblematic events (Woodstock), inspiring words (Martin Luther King) or riveting photographs (D-day bombing).

Which is why we love Peter Menzel and Faith D’Alusio’s Hungry Planet: What the World Eats, a photographic journey to 24 countries, where the authors stayed with 30 different families for a week each, documenting on paper and film what these families ate and how much it cost.

Each photograph depicts all the family members in their home environment, surrounded by a week’s worth of groceries.

United States: The Revis family of North Carolina

Food expenditure for one week: $341.98

Image copyright Peter Menzel, menzelphoto.com

Guatemala: The Mendozas of Todos Santos

Food expenditure per week: 573 Quetzales ($75.70)

Image copyright Peter Menzel, menzelphoto.com

There’s something very special about the photograph and its ability to encapsulate the time’s vibe, condensing big amounts of information — cultural, political, economic — in a commentary that engages us emotionally. The student standing in front of a tank on Tiananmen Square. The Pulitzer-Prize-winning photo of a vulture stalking a starved child. National Geographic’s iconic Afghan girl. Even without the full contextual facts about these photos, they somehow make us get “it.” And Hungry Planet does just that.

Comparing these images makes for some shocking conclusions, both funny and sad — prolific fodder for sociology, economics, and anthropology college papers alike. But to stick to our point here, we’ll seize elaboration and let the photographs speak.

Australia: The Browns of River View

Food expenditure per week: 481.14 Australian dollars ($376.45)

Image copyright Peter Menzel, menzelphoto.com

Japan: The Ukita family of Kodaira City

Food expenditure per week: 37,699 Yen ($317.25)

Image copyright Peter Menzel, menzelphoto.com

Egypt: The Ahmed family of Cairo

Food expenditure per week: 387.85 Egyptian Pounds ($68.53)

Image copyright Peter Menzel, menzelphoto.com

Chad: The Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp

Food expenditure per week: 685 CFA Francs ($1.23)

Image copyright Peter Menzel, menzelphoto.com

Grab a copy of Hungry Planet for a truly revelational journey into something we take for tragically granted.

Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s an example. Like? Sign up.

Photography Spotlight: Blue Planet Run

World-changing photography, or why the oil crisis is the least of our liquid worries.

The best of photography goes beyond visual fascination and stunning imagery, and serves as a moving call to action.

That’s exactly what photographers Rick Smolan and Jennifer Erwitt do in Blue Planet Run, their latest project with the ambitious goal of bringing clean drinking water to the world.

And if that’s where you roll your eyes because the blue-is-the-new-green card has been played before, stay with us: The seat of privileged is about to get a bit more uncomfortable.

The book, which Amazon offers as a free PDF for a limited time, is a tumultuous blend of photography both stunning photography, chilling revelations and — ultimately — a call to action that puts the solutions to the water problem front and center, and each of us in the driver’s seat to change.

Here are a few factoids about “the other half”:

• 1.1 billion people don’t have access to clean water. That’s 1 in 6.

• Half of the world today doesn’t have access to the quality of water available to Romans 2,000 years ago

• 1.8 billion children die of waterborn disease every year. That’s one child every 15 seconds, or 3 dead children by the time it took you to get this far in the post.
• 4,800 people die every day of waterborn disease. That’s the equivalent of 11 jumbo airplane crashes.
• 5.3 billion people — or two thirds of the world — will suffer from water shortages by 2025

And a few factoids about the kind of excess we Westerners roll in:

• A single quarter-pound hamburger — just the meat — takes 2,900 gallons of water to make
• The average American uses 100-175 gallons of water per day. And that doesn’t include agriculture.
• 3,350 gallons of water are used to water the grass for every single round of golf — there are 16,100 golf courses in the U.S., on which 90 rounds are played every day. That’s 4,839,678,000 gallons of water. Supporting golf. Every day.

But because information is useless if it doesn’t effect change, the book ends on a hopeful note — Blue Planet Run Foundation was born, an ambitious hunt for solutions both at the individual and organizational levels.

In 2007, the foundation held its first real run — a 95-day, 15,200-mile race where 20 dedicated runners from 13 countries go around the world — literally — to raise awareness about the water problem.

Proceeds from the race go to the Peer Water Exchange, the foundation’s radical initiative to tackle thousands of grassroots water and sanitation projects around the world by revolutionizing the funding model and funneling it through a pool of NGO’s rather than an endless loop of bureaucracy.P

But perhaps most importantly, there are things each of us can do to alleviate the severity of the water problem. Because simple behavioral changes have a greater long-term impact than we could ever suspect.

Grab a copy of Blue Planet Run, even only for the gripping, magnificent photography. But, we promise you, somewhere in the 122 pages you’ll discover a drowning desire to get up and do something about it.

We’ve got a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s an example. Like? Sign up.

Deadliest Itch: Malaria Awareness Mosquito-Mosaic Posters

Why the seat of privilege comes down to having OFF! on hand.

The other day, we established that we’re all African. Fitting, since today we’re looking at one of the coolest awareness campaigns we’ve seen in a long while, which happens to address Africa’s most serious malady: Mosquitoes.

And if you think we’re kidding, or making an awful joke that belittles the AIDS epidemic or genocide, we’re not — every year, mosquito-carried malaria takes more children’s lives in Africa than all other diseases combined. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 3,000 children die from malaria every day.

So African nonprofit África Directo unleashed a brilliant campaign to make this simple point so powerfully:

“Nothing and no one takes more lives than malaria”

The portraits are, of course, composed entirely of mosquitoes — a stencil technique that puts Banksy to shame.

Out of Spainish agency Sra. Rushmore.

via Arab Aquarius

Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s an example. Like? Sign up.