What Kids Eat Around the World

From Daily Bread by Gregg Segal, published by powerHouse Books

Food

What Kids Eat Around the World

Written by Erin Feher

Photography by

Jun 3, 2019

A huge part of raising children is feeding them, and the way we do so is unmistakably marked with our culture, geographic location, socioeconomic standing, and even political beliefs. Nothing brings this into sharper focus than the new book Daily Bread. We are completely obsessed with the book’s stunning images by photographer Gregg Segal, who embarked on a global project asking kids from around the world—including Los Angeles, Sao Paulo, Dakar, Hamburg, Dubai, and Mumbai—to take his “Daily Bread” challenge.

“I asked kids to keep a journal of everything that ate for one week. At the end of the week, producers collected the journals, checked to make sure they were complete, and then handed them off to the cooks who’d shop for all the ingredients and reproduce all of the meals,” says Segal. “I photographed as many as 5 kids a day, so the cooks were responsible for preparing over 100 meals. These were often 14 hour days for the food-preppers. It was demanding and exhausting!”

But the results are worth it: The colorful and hyper-detailed results tell a unique story of multiculturalism and how we nourish ourselves at the dawn of the 21st century, and the touching bios of each child, summarized in their own words, add even greater depth to the images. There are also some unexpected revelations when it comes to the way we eat around the world: “One of the surprising lessons of Daily Bread is that the best quality diets are often eaten not by the richest but the poorest,” says Segal. “In the U.S., the poor are the biggest consumers of junk food because it’s convenient and cheap. But in Mumbai, it costs $13 for a medium Dominoes pizza, which is way beyond the means of most people, like Anchal, who lives with her family in an 8-by-8-foot aluminum hut. Her father earns less than $5 a day, yet Anchal eats a wholesome diet of okra and cauliflower curries, lentils and roti which Anchal’s mother makes from scratch each day on a single kerosene burner. In contrast, Shraman lives in a middle-class Mumbai hi-rise and eats very differently. His family’s extra income means he can afford Dominoes pizza, fried chicken and treats like Snickers bars and Cadbury chocolate.”

Click through the full slideshow below, then buy your own copy of the book right here —it will ship when it is released tomorrow morning!

Alex and Jessica live in the foothills of Altadena with their daddy and papa who are engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a NASA field center in La Canada, California. Their yard is filled with food: blackberry bushes, grape vines, and fruit trees—fig, peach, pomegranate, guava, mulberry, jujubes, and banana. They have chickens, too, and eat their eggs almost every day.

Jessica loves sweets and pizza with ham and is repelled by beans, peppers, sushi, and chocolate. She’s good at drawing and daydreaming and on weekends the whole family roller-skates at Moonlight Rollerway. Jessica is the richest person on her street besides their neighbor Mary Anne. When she grows up, she wants to be an author and university professor.

Alex makes Hot Pockets, pizza rolls, and quesadillas herself, but her favorite dish is macaroni and cheese. She refuses to eat Brussels sprouts or soggy leftover broccoli. She collects rocks and shells and is saving up for an xbox 360 and Nintendo Switch. Alex makes people laugh without even trying because she’s a spaz, she says. Her long-range goal is to get a PhD and have an outstanding career.

After the photo shoot, Alex and Jessica took much of the leftover food home to feed their chickens.

Photo and text via Daily Bread.

Altaf and his family live in Kampung Kerdas, a small village of about 30 families on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur. There are many children Altaf’s age. They chase each other around the neighborhood almost every evening and pick fruit from the trees: mango, rambutan and mangosteen. If it’s raining, they’ll play marbles.

Often, Altaf visits his grandparents who live five minutes away. Altaf’s father makes and sells satay sticks at his own stand and runs delivery for a Malaysian on-line platform part-time while his mom takes care of the house and kids; she’s expecting her fourth soon.

Altaf’s favorite food is his father’s chicken and beef satay. It’s seasoned with ginger and herbs, roasted over a charcoal fire and served with sliced, cold cucumber. Altaf dips his satays in a tangy sauce made with roasted ground peanuts, chili paste, garlic and lemongrass. Altaf will eat any “tasteful” food (made with a lot of ingredients and flavors) and likes raw, leafy greens like Ulam-Ulam, a salad eaten with anchovies, cincalok (a condiment made from fermented krill) and sambal (hot sauce). The only foods Altaf avoids are pickles and other sour things.

Altaf collects parcel stickers, big, colorful ones, and likes to discover new things. He loves science because to him it is magic. When he grows up, he wants to be a pilot. He loves to fly like birds while watching the skies and clouds. As he falls asleep, Altaf thinks of what he’ll do tomorrow: catch fish, climb a tall fruit tree, or cycle far from his village.

Photo and text via Daily Bread.

Anchal lives in a tiny tin shack on a construction site in a suburb of Mumbai with her parents and two siblings. Her father makes less than $5 a day, just enough for her mother to prepare okra and cauliflower curry, lentils, and roti from scratch.

Anchal would like to return to the farm where she was born in Bihar, go to school like other kids and eventually become a teacher, but she’s kept busy with household chores and looking after her baby brother.

When she has time, she dresses up and leaves the construction site to enjoy the fragrance of jasmine and lotus and to watch the neighborhood kids playing cricket and running free.

While on her walks, Anchal collects brightly colored chocolate wrappers she finds along the road by the grocery store. Anchal wishes her mother would love her the way she loves her baby brother.

Photo and text via Daily Bread.

Beryl lives in a quiet condominium with her parents and two brothers. She goes to S. J. K. Han Ming Puchong, a national Chinese school walking distance from home. Beryl’s dad is an engineer and her mother runs a day care.

Beryl’s earliest memory of food is porridge and cake. Her favorite dish is spaghetti with carbonara sauce. Beryl grows bok choy and spinach in her balcony garden, is not permitted to drink sodas, and refuses to eat ginger.

She would like to be a cheerleader.

Photo and text via Daily Bread.

Greta lives with her mother and younger sister in Hamburg, but spends quite a bit of time with her grandparents, too. On the path to her grandparents home is a great big chestnut tree and in autumn, Greta searches in the foliage for chestnuts with her little sister.

Greta’s favorite food is fish sticks with mashed potatoes and applesauce. She can’t stand rice pudding.

One thing Greta is really good at is snapping her fingers, both hands at the same time.

At night, while falling asleep, Greta thinks mostly about her mother, who is usually in the next room watching T.V.

Photo and text via Daily Bread.

Isaiah was raised by his mother and grandmother, who does most of the cooking at home. One day, Isaiah would like to have enough space to grow his own garden.

Isaiah’s favorite food is orange chicken and fried rice and he loves the smell of apples sautéed with cinnamon. His mom doesn’t permit him to drink soda and after this photo shoot, Isaiah decided to eliminate snacks from his diet.

Isaiah’s wish is that no one will go hungry in the world. He plays the drums and the flute and is studying acting. He’d like to be as funny as Eddie Murphy or Tyler Perry and be able to fly like Superman.

Photo and text via Daily Bread.

Kawakanih, whose last name comes from her tribe, the Yawalapiti, lives in Xingu National Park, a preserve in the Amazonian Basin of Brazil that can be seen from space. The park is encircled by cattle ranches and soybean crops. In the past six months alone, nearly 100 million trees have been destroyed by illegal logging and expanding agrobusiness. The Yawalapiti and other Xingu tribes collect seeds to preserve species unique to their ecosystem, which lies between the rain forest and savannah.

The Yawalapiti’s language is threatened, too. When Kawakanih was born, only seven speakers of Arawaki remained. Determined to keep the language from going extinct, Kawakanih’s mother, Watatakalu, isolated her daughter from those who didn’t speak Arawaki. Kawakanih is the first child to be raised speaking Arawaki since the 1940s and her mother says it’s up to her children now to keep the language alive. Kawakanih has also learned her father’s dialect as well as Portuguese.

She loves to read history books, especially ones about the Egyptians. Her days are spent playing in the river, fishing, helping with chores, harvesting manioc, making beiju (cassava flatbread), and beading necklaces worn during tribal rituals.

Every couple months, Kawakanih travels to Canarana for school where she learns computer skills, though no one in her village owns a computer; there is no electricity or running water. To get to the studio in Brasilia, Kawakanih and her mother traveled 31 hours from their village by boat, bus, and car.

Kawakanih’s body paint protects her from bad spirits and energy. Black paint is made from jenipapo fruit and red is made from ground urucum seeds (a pod of seeds lies to the left of her head). Rainforest tribes have used the entire Urucum plant as medicine for centuries.

Kawakanih’s diet is very simple, consisting mainly of fish, cassava, porridge, fruit, and nuts. “It takes five minutes to catch dinner,” says Kawakanih. “When you’re hungry, you just go to the river with your net.”

Photo and text via Daily Bread.

Meissa shares a single room with his dad, mum, and brother in the heart of Parcelles Assainies, which means “sanitized plots.” A treeless, sandy suburb of Dakar, Parcelles Assainies was developed in the 1970s to house the poor overflowing from the city. Meissa lives opposite the futbol stadium and open-air market, hundreds of stalls selling everything from fresh fish to wedding dresses.

In late August, tethered goats line the streets before Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice. Meissa, a devout Muslim and student at Quran School, loves goat meat and sweet foods like porridge, though in the week he kept a diary of his meals, he ate very little meat. More often, he filled up on French bread stuffed with spaghetti, peas, or fried potatoes. Meissa’s mum and anties prepare his meals though once or twice a week they get take out.

Meissa loves futbol most of all and hopes to be a star player like Messi or Ronaldo. If he had enough money, he’d buy a nice little sports car.

He wishes his mum and dad, a refrigerator technician, could immigrate to France so that they can earn enough money.

Photo and text via Daily Bread.

Nur’s parents come from a rural village in East Malaysia. Her granny has supernatural beliefs passed down from long ago. She prepares food for the spirits and asks that they guard her family.

Both Nur’s parents work in the hospitality industry and have a three-bedroom townhouse in Taman Sinaran, Balakong, a busy neighborhood in the state of Kajang, south of Kuala Lumpur. People from different races live on Nur’s street and they always greet one other and get together on weekends.

Nur’s diet includes a variety of Chinese, Indian, and Malay dishes like chee cheong fun, rice noodle rolls filled with steamed tofu, beancurd skin, and fish balls served with a little sweet chili paste; roti canai, a flatbread eaten with dal and curry; and nasi lemak, a blend of rice, boiled eggs, cucumber, anchovies, peanuts and sambal (hot sauce) cooked in coconut milk and wrapped in banana leaves. 90% of Nur’s meals are homemade; she loves her mother’s cooking, especially her nasa ayam (chicken and rice), and her nasi lemak, which is mild and doesn’t give her a stomachache like the spicy store-bought ones. The unhealthiest food Nur eats are the snacks and sweet drinks she buys at her school canteen.

Nur is a tough, stoic girl; she doesn’t cry when she falls off her bike. She just gets back on and keeps riding, setting an example for her two little sisters.

When she grows up, Nur would like to be a dentist and help people take care of their teeth.

Photo and text via Daily Bread.

Since her parents split up, Rosalie has lived part time with her mom, and part time with her dad, which allows her to see both the Mediterranean Sea and the French Alps from home. She has a healthy diet (which includes lots of fresh fish, like sardines) thanks in part to her father, a restaurateur, who has taught her to make crepes, salads, and lentils with sausage, her favorite dish. The only foods she won’t eat are ratatouille, spinach, and cucumber.

Rosalie gets her sense of style from her mother, a fashion designer, and plans to be an interior designer.

Rosalie is into Thai kickboxing, rock climbing, gymnastics, and performs magic tricks. She’s a fan of actors Cole Sprouse and Emma Watson and in her free time goes to the cinema.

She notices she’s getting older because she has a phone. There’s nothing missing in Rosalie’s life, though she’d like to go to Los Angeles and explore Hollywood Boulevard.

If she had enough money, she’d buy a sailboat or maybe even a yacht.

Photo and text via Daily Bread.

Tharkish and Mierra’s roots in Malaysia begin with their great-grandfather who migrated from South India to build a better future, but only found work as a rubber tapper before being conscripted by the Japanese to build the “Death Railway” from Siam to Burma in 1943.

Tharkish and Mierra live with their mom and dad in a public housing project in Bukit Jalil, a suburb of Kuala Lumpur. Their apartment block is full of friends and noisy in a good way. Their dad works as a gaffer in film production and their mom is a homemaker and does most of the cooking though on weekends they eat KFC, Pizza Hut, or Chinese takeout.

Mierra dislikes the pungent smell of meat and traces of blood. She prefers candies and chocolates. Her earliest memory of food is rice porridge, her comfort food whenever she falls sick. Tharkish’s favorite food is Puttu, steamed ground rice layered with coconut and topped with bananas and palm sugar. Tharkish doesn’t like onions because they taste weird and leave a funny smell in his mouth. His first taste was Urad Dal Porridge, an Indian baby food made with dal, rice, coconut, cardamon and jaggery (concentrated date palm sap).

Mierra says her diet is healthy because her mom avoids foods with preservatives, additives and msg, though after her Daily Bread portrait, she still thinks she could eat less processed food. Mierra loves to read and play badminton and snakes and ladders while her brother is into chess, carom, and surfing the internet.

Mierra strives to be the top student in her class and wants to be a doctor, while Tharkish will be happy with a top 3 finish after examinations and pictures himself an IT engineer.

Photo and text via Daily Bread.

Yusuf’s mom came to Dubai from Ireland to work as a pastry chef and chocolatier. She married an Emerati man and they had one son before separating.

Yusuf loves his mum’s cooking though he makes scrambled eggs and toast all on his own.

Yusuf likes to read, draw, climb, ride horses, and create science projects. He thinks he’ll either be a pilot or police officer when he grows up.

If he had the money, he’d buy a Ferrari. His role models are Batman and his mother.

Yusuf wishes for his mum to get married again and that he’ll have brothers and sisters.

Lying in bed at night, he thinks back to building a birdhouse with his granddad, fishing with him in the rivers in Ireland, and going to Warner Brothers with his grandmom.

Photo and text via Daily Bread.

What are you looking for?