Eating Around the World

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I object strongly to the image of the Chadian family pictured in "How the World Eats" [June 25--July 2]. While you showed other families in other parts of the world in the relative comfort of their homes and flush with food, you depicted a Chadian family in a refugee camp with meager rations. Has the whole of Africa turned into one big refugee camp, so that there isn't even one functional family that could have been pictured? The black American family pictured on the next page was cold comfort.
Bukola Eleso, LAGOS

I have lived in Japan some 25 years, and though Pico Iyer's Japanese friends may suggest eating at Colonel Sanders', I have never met any food-loving Japanese older than 14 who would opt for KFC or McDonald's. Junk food is junk food, and to suggest that it is somehow different in different regions is to let delusions substitute for the real world.
Luther Link, SHIMODA, JAPAN

The comparison of the weekly fare of five families around the world is striking. The American family is the only one that eats practically no fresh produce. The picture of a tiny bowl of grapes, two tomatoes and a few onions represents the amount of fruits and vegetables that the average four-person U.S. family eats in an entire week. Fresh bread and fish are also absent. With the exception of meat, most foods are processed. Counting Ragú sauce as a serving of vegetables is just a gimmick. It's no wonder that American diet books recommend reading food labels. Maybe it would be wise to recommend food with no labels: fresh fruits, vegetables, fish and bread. I lived in the U.S. for two years, and I know that healthful foods are available, even in supermarkets. People simply do not buy them. Price may be the reason, but I think advertising is to blame. Has anyone seen prime-time TV ads for fresh apples or cucumbers?
Hanna Bortkiewicz, WARSAW

While reading through your summer Journey Special Issue, featuring a novel's worth of reporting on food, I noticed comments about people being very conservative and preferring the particular flavors they encountered as children. That is not always the case. When I was 18, I became a vegan and tried tofu for the first time, but I was not put off by its strangeness. When I was 20, I went to France from Canada and tried the best food I had ever eaten.
Daniel Owens, PARIS

It's good that different countries and regions can influence one another's cuisine. And while we might expect that globalization and changing lifestyles would make people abandon their ancient diets, we still find happiness in the basics. India has a number of varieties, from state to state and region to region. Within India, Kerala is famous for its lunch of more than 20 dishes followed by four or five sweets, a feast found at almost all wedding parties. Kerala meals could be an added attraction for hungry foreign tourists.
A. Jacob Sahayam, THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, INDIA

The write-up on how the world eats made for interesting reading, but it also inadvertently brought to light the grim reality of the divide between rich and poor. While the average food expenditure of a family in Germany runs to $500 per week, a poor refugee family in Chad survives on the barest minimum, with only a $1.23 food expenditure per week. I would welcome another cover story that reveals the global family's expenditure pattern.
Sanjay Kumar, NEW DELHI

Your "We Are What We Eat" issue was great, but there is something missing in the article "The Food Chains That Link Us All." You did not include a family from an Arab country. What about Lebanese food? What about Morocco's finest gastronomy? If food is a part of culture, does this mean that there is no culture in the Arab countries? I often read TIME and feel as if we Arabs exist only in stories about violence, war and bombings. When it comes to art, food, sport, culture and all the other things that happen every day in the Arab world, we are nonexistent.
Khalid Aabid, LONDON