USA-080428-105-xxw

Todd Kincer, a coal miner, with his typical day’s worth of food and his workday lunch box at his home in Mayking, Kentucky. (From the book What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets.) The caloric value of his day’s worth of food in the month of April was 3,200 kcals. He is 34 years of age; 5 feet, 11 inches tall; and 185 pounds. After showering and scrubbing off the day’s coal dust, Todd gets ready to dig in to one of his favorite meals: Hamburger Helper with double noodles. A college graduate drawn to the coal mine by the relatively high pay, Todd spends a 10-hour shift mining underground, driving a low-slung electric shuttle car that carries coal from the face of the coal seam, where it’s being chewed up by a deafening, dusty mining machine, to a conveyer belt. The mine, located deep inside a mountain in the Appalachians near the town of Whitesburg, Kentucky, is pitch-black, except for headlights and headlamps. During winter months, Todd never sees daylight during the workweek. MODEL RELEASED.