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What the world eats now

by Eric Schulmiller · June 5th, 2007
Art, Books, Food Writing, Neat Projects, On The Web, gifts

Check out these great excerpts from a photo essay entitled, What the World Eats, from the book, Hungry Planet, by photographer (and fellow tribesman?) Peter Menzel.

And if you’re ever confused about what blessing to say when encountering a new food, you can use this new handy gadget, from The Jewish Learning Group!

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4 Responses to “What the world eats now”

  1. Leah Koenig Says:
    June 6th, 2007 at 2:01 pm

    This is kind of amazing - I actually could use one…

  2. David Rendsburg Says:
    June 6th, 2007 at 4:59 pm

    I dont know, I feel it borders on the ridiculous.

    The thing is, there are two problems with knowing which blessing to say. One is the words of the blessing, which this would help for. The other is knowing what to say on which food, which can get really complicated (there are entire books on the subject, not to mention “Beracha Bees” in Jewish day schools to help students learn).

    For instance, not all fruit is haEtz (take melon, which is grown in the ground and is haAdama). And, when does something move from haAdama (potatoes, clearly from the ground) to sheHaKol (potato chips, which aren’t quite as recognizable as from the ground). Cereals can be either haAdamah (corn flakes), sheHaKol (corn chex), or Mezonot (cheerios). And there are Crispix, which (no kidding!) most books will say you need to say two blessings on, Adamah for the corn side and SheHaKol for the rice side (why rice is sheHaKol is just another example!).

    You can check out this link for a long list of foods (and I assure you there are disagreements over some of them).

  3. Carly Says:
    June 11th, 2007 at 12:43 pm

    I so want the b’racha gizmo. It’s hilarious and practical. I love it!

  4. Rabbi Shmuel Says:
    June 12th, 2007 at 4:21 pm

    kitschy yet though-provoking (Zalman Goldstein, the guy who makes them is a sort of tormented musical genius - his rendiditons of chassidic songs range from the truly cheesy to the truly sublime (and everything in between)

    David R is on the money with the complexity involved, but hey it’s a good start

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