Michael Olesker, The Examiner
2008-07-10 07:00:00.0
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BALTIMORE -

Now comes more unwelcome news that many of the world’s political leaders are strictly from hunger. You heard about this, right? At the G-8 summit in Japan, they sat down this week to what’s described as “an 18-course gastronomic extravaganza” — to discus world hunger.

I thought about this as I stood behind the gray-haired woman in the grocery store in northwest Baltimore County, who downsized her “gastronomic extravaganza” in mid-order.

The eaters — uh, leaders — at the G-8 summit of eight nations, including our own, started out their conference this week with a “working lunch” consisting of six courses that included white asparagus and truffle soup, Kegani crab and chicken stuffed with nuts and orange savoury and beetroot foam.

Then, just six hours after pronouncing themselves “deeply concerned” over rising food prices and supply shortages, the feeders — uh, leaders — dined on such delicacies as caviar and milk-fed lamb, smoked salmon and sea urchin, kelp-flavored beef and grilled eel, roast lamb with crepes and black truffle, and a “G-8 fantasy desert.” You don’t want to be around this gang when they start to belch.

At the grocery store in northwest Baltimore County, the old woman stood in the crowd at the deli counter with her little number in her hand and finally asked for some sliced chicken breast.

The leaders at the G-8 summit, meeting on a remote Japanese island with 20,000 police deployed to keep protesters away, had champagne and four other wines flown in from Europe and the U.S. At such moments, the rest of us will mix our liquids with Alka Seltzer.

At the grocery store in Baltimore County, the man behind the deli counter wiped his hands on his apron and asked, “How much?”

“A quarter-pound,” the old woman replied.

As the counter guy started to slice, the old woman got a panicky second thought.

“How much is that?” she asked.

“$9.99 a pound,” the counter guy said.

“So don’t give me a quarter-pound,” the old woman said. “Just make it three slices.”

She glanced around at the small crowd waiting to place their own deli orders, and some impulse prompted her to mutter aloud, as though justifying the change.

“I’ll just make a sandwich,” she said. “That’ll be enough.”

Well, it’s no roast lamb with crepes and black truffle, but it’ll have to be enough for now. A World Bank study released last week estimated that up to 105 million more people around the globe could “face extreme poverty” because of rising food and energy prices. Many are old people living on fixed incomes. Many are children.

World Bank officials said food prices have risen 83 percent since 2005.

In Maryland, food industry leaders gathered this week to speak out about federal ethanol mandates sparking higher food costs, claiming that the national campaign to convert corn to ethanol is responsible for more than 30 percent of the world’s food price inflation.

At the G-8 summit, leaders pledged increased aid to Africa, the world’s poorest continent. Perhaps they did this between courses. In one of the great ironies of the conference, leaders from Africa, including the heads of Ethiopia, Tanzania and Senegal, who took part in the talks, were excluded from the lavish lunch and dinner, which was prepared by an award-winning Japanese chef.

As Marie Antoinette might have remarked to those left out, “Let them eat sushi.”

Which brings us back to the grocery store in northwest Baltimore County, and the deli counter after the late afternoon crowd went away.

“The woman who ordered the three slices of turkey breast,” the counter man was asked. “Are you seeing more of that?”

“The older people, especially,” he said. “The ones on fixed income. They’re eating less. And they’re ordering new ways.”

“New ways?”

“Used to be,” he said, “they’d order a quarter-pound of something, a half-pound, a pound. Now they come in and say, ‘Gimme a dollar’s worth of that. Gimme two dollars of that.’”

This is not the same as empty-belly starvation faced by people in the planet’s poorest nations. But it’s a sign of our nervous economic time. Some people who once drove to the food store to pick up odds and ends now make sure they do all their shopping in one trip — it saves on $4-a-gallon gas.

Others, who once bought turkey breast by the pound, now buy by the slice.

While others, gathered for their summit on world hunger, pass the caviar and the milk-fed lamb, reach for another round of champagne, and seem oblivious to all cruel irony.