BRA-071107-310-xxw

João Agustinho Cardoso, a fisherman, in his floating house on a branch of the Solimoes River with his typical day’s worth of food in Manacapuru, Brazil. (From the book What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets.) The caloric value of his day’s worth of food for a typical day in the month of November was 5200 kcals. He is 69 years of age; 5 feet 2.5 inches tall and 140 pounds. João’s new house has no electricity and the toilet is simply the end of the big balsa wood logs the house is floating on. There is, however, running water, and plenty of it, in the half-mile-wide branch of the river they live on. Unfortunately the water is not potable, but it is teeming with fish, including piranha, which can make swimming during the early morning or evening worrisome. The curimata in the photo is just one of dozens of species that makes its way onto João’s table. Absent from his daily diet are any alcoholic or caffeinated beverages, eschewed by his Seventh-day Adventist religion. MODEL RELEASED.