Time Magazine has a fascinating photo essay called “What the World Eats.” It’s a series of 15 family portraits from around the world, with each family gathered in their home around what represents a typical week’s worth of food consumption.

The photo essay is adapted from the book Hungry Planet: What the World Eats (Ten Speed Press, 2005) and offers a revealing window on the relation between income, branding and food consumption despite the fact that Time Magazine stripped out detailed descriptions about the families’ food choices that appeared in the book.

Nonetheless, many insights can be gleaned by the pictures and the bits of information provided, mainly the amount spent on food. By design, the essay is focused on traditional nuclear families, no “alternative” households here, though a few are extended families.

At the low end is a refugee family in Chad, The Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp, whose weekly expenditure is the equivalent of $1.23 for three large sacks of grains and pulses and a dozen small bags of what are probably various spices and aromatics and a handful of limes (perhaps to ward off scurvy). What looks to be a bottle of water is probably oil because obviously one small bottle is not going to be enough for a family of six and in any case there are many large water containers behind the family. (One person needs at least two gallons of water a day for cooking, drinking and hygiene needs, meaning this family would need 84 gallons a week.)

The Aboubakar family has the most spartan diet and is only one of two in the photo essay without any pre-packaged branded goods, the other being the Ayme family of Tingo, Ecuador. Though if one wants to be a stickler for details, the Aboubakars’ bottle of oil does have what looks like to be a paper sleeve with logos over it, probably from whatever relief agency supplied it. (Theirs is also the only one that appears to be a single-parent family, with a mother and five children ranging from infant to fully grown. And they are the only ones in photographed outside their home, which in their case is a tent.)

At the other extreme is the Melander family of Bargteheide, Germany. For a family of four, their weekly food budget is $500.07. Their per capita weekly food expenditure works out to $125.02 compared to 20.5 cents for the Aboubakars, meaning one German’s food budget is equal to 610 Chadian refugees.

Another fascinating contrast is that while the Aboubakars get their hydration through water in the industrial-grade jugs behind them, the Melanders get theirs in over 60 bottles and cartons of juice, wine, water, beer and (presumably) milk in the background for the young boys — giving you a sense of the huge amount of energy and packaging waste one Western family consumes and produces in just a week.

The Melanders, incidentally, have the most decadent and deadly favorite foods: “fried potatoes with onions, bacon and herring, fried noodles with eggs and cheese, pizza, vanilla pudding.” That first dish alone, fried potatoes with bacon and herring, is a coronary event in a skillet. At least the Melanders know how to party, given the 4 bottles of wine and 20 beers (and perhaps more; it’s not clear what all the bottles are) the two parents consume every week.

The Melanders all appear to be reasonably fit, but that’s surprising given the enormous amount of food they consume: piles of meat, chocolates, breads, frozen pizzas, dips, cheeses, pastas, fruit, vegetables and many other items that can’t be identified. The 4 of them look like they consume twice as many calories as does the entire Ahmed family of 12 in Cairo, Egypt, whose diet is weighted more towards fresh vegetables, with meat and grains, particularly rice, to round it out. Still, one can spy plenty of packaged goods among the items, with a few bottles of soda, such as Sprite and Coca-Cola, and possibly Knorr soup mixes, as signposts of globalization.

If there is one item that is truly globalized, it would be bananas. Of the 15 families, 10 eat bananas (11 if you count the Ecuadorians’ plantains.)

Speaking of Coke, it is found in many of the families’ bounties, from Egypt to China to Italy (or at least its arch-rival, Pepsi) to Poland to Mexico to the U.S. The worst offender is The Casales family of Cuernavaca, Mexico, with what looks like 12 one-and-a-half liter bottles, which works out to almost five gallons a week for a family of five. It contrasts with the plentiful array of fresh vegetables and fruit the family otherwise eats and makes itself evident in the el gordito in the foreground. Corn Flakes can be spotted among the spreads of the Kuwaiti and Mexican families, with other Kellogg products showing up in the kitchen of the Caven family of California.

Fast food takeout is less popular, with only the Chinese family having some KFC, and, of course, one American family, the Revis of North Carolina. By selecting families, the essay skips over many single and childless couples that tend to eat out much more. In fact, as of last year, according to a separate issue of Time Magazine, Americans spent more money on restaurant and carryout food, some $390 billion, than on groceries, $363 billion.

The Revis are the only example of this extreme, with half of a table given over to fast-food meals from Burger King, McDonald’s, and possibly also KFC and Taco Bell along with large meat and cheese pizzas held by the two teenage sons. Hands down, the Revis have the worst diet featuring mounds of meat, bags of chips, and an endless variety of sugar water. There is a cornucopia of packaged goods in their home and virtually no fresh fruit or vegetables. (The Revis have three dietetic strikes against them – American, from the South and African American. Americans have some of the worst nutritional habits in the world, with the other two sub-groups exacerbating poor choices with meals heavy in fat, sugar and meat.)

Other families heartily indulge their fondness for junk food, too. Fitting with cultural predilections, the Bainton family of Cllingbourne Ducis, Great Britain, pound crisps (potato chips), mayonnaise and candy bars while the German Melanders indulge the Teutonic fondness for chocolate. A polish family, The Sobczynscys, also appear to have a wicked sweet tooth.

In contrast, the Ukita family of Japan name fruit, which comes carefully wrapped, as one of their favorite foods. Because fruit is scarcer and thus more expensive in Japan because of the environmental conditions and limited farmland, it is treasured there both from the retail and consumer end. The Ukitas rely on fish far more than meat, which is in such small amounts it’s probably used more as flavoring. But the Japanese family also has an enormous amount of packaged goods, particularly flavored noodles.

Interestingly, apart from the Americans, the heaviest consumer of meat appears to be the Dong family of Beijing, indicating how rising wealth in China is being matched by a diet of affluence. The healthiest diets seem to come from the poorest countries. The nine-member Ayme family of Ecuador looks as if they are vegetarians with mounds of tubers, grains, beans and greens. But this is probably a function of income as they spend only $31.55 a week, or barely $3.50 per person. Similarly, a Bhutanese family, the Namgays, is mostly vegetarian, but the amount of food looks sparse for the 12 members. It seems their main food item is rice, with a bag probably weighing around 50 pounds. Their food budget, 42 cents a head, is on the scale of the Chadian family.

The diet of the poor is a stark reminder of how most of us have become separated from the land. What we eat is mostly highly processed food that bears little relation to nature. Our food is much more a product of lab science and marketing than sun, soil, seed and water. Of course there are any number of back-to-the-land food methods and movements — organic, permaculture, biodynamic, community supported agriculture, slow food, locavores, farmers’ markets, etc., but they are a tiny slice of Americana.

Even though most of us know better, we still ingest this garbage. Perhaps because having grown up with it, we do have a fondness for it. But more so, because it is the easy choice given our industrial food system and hyper-marketing culture. No one needs to be told anymore to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables and whole grains, but who has the time or skills? It’s a lot easier to grab a slice of pizza. Changing our food habits is not just a matter of choice, it is a matter of politics.