Now this is just stupid
Kasia July 8th, 2008
Stupid. And plain wrong.
So the G8 summit is going on, and while these poor overworked world leaders are discussing critical food shortages and rising food prices, this is what they’re eating.
“Questionable public relations move” doesn’t even begin to say it. That must be that British gift for understatement shining through.
And Gordon Brown is lecturing Britons not to waste food. That’s rich.
I admit I’ve wasted plenty of food in my life. It’s a terrible habit, and I’m working on curbing it.
That said, admonishments from world leaders would carry a lot more weight if there were even a shred of evidence that they’re making similar efforts. Kind of like environmental causes: the sincere efforts of people like Mr. and Mrs. DJ to use less toxic cleaners and otherwise try to live green ring louder than a hundred rich yahoos who go around shouting at me to hang out my washing and eat less meat, as they get back into their Land Rover or Hummer or three tour buses (which they’ve left idling) to go on to their next stop. (Include in that latter category Al Gore, who wants me to purchase carbon offsets which are conveniently sold by a company he owns.)
Hey G8! Have you ever heard of “teleconferencing”? You’d knock the carbon footprint of the summit down to about a size 0.5 with that.
At the very least, don’t shovel eight courses of gourmet food into your mouths and then try to talk about food shortages. It’s rude to talk with your mouth full.
My issue isn’t so much with the 8-course dinner (I’ve got issues, but it’s not the focus of my irritation) but with the nearly HALF A BILLION dollars spent on the conference. I agree that holding a ‘virtual’ conference would have been a much more responsible thing to do.
More appropriate would be a day of fasting…. (And prayer….)
Amen, Jaibee.
I keep thinking about the retreat our clergy went on at the Capuchin Retreat House. Know what lunch was? Bread, cheese, fruit, veggies, and nuts. When the Capuchins say “a simple lunch”, that’s exactly what they mean. To drink, I think they had choice of water or lemonade.
I’m not saying the world leaders have to eat bread and cheese for the summit, or fast (though it would certainly be instructive if they did!); but the contrast is just too painfully striking.
Yum! I want a Capuchin dinner!
The irony is rather blinding, isn’t it?
Kasia– bet that the folks at the retreat enjoyed the food more than these folks did.
Dang, and here I was feeling bad about eating so much at the Indian Buffet.
I have looked for 2 days and cannot find the source, but I remember reading an account - 2 people were attending the same conference, and decided to eat lunch together. There was rather a nice buffet laid out, and the one guy went through the line and got what he wanted. When they sat down, he looked at the other person’s plate (I cannot remember, but I want to say it was a woman, who was either a Quaker or a Mennonite) and realized this other person only had a bowl of soup, a slice of bread, some cheese and an apple. He asked if she was dieting, and she explained that she was eating simply (by comparison to the other attendees) in solidarity with the hungry of the world, and that, even as she was limiting her food, she was still eating better than the poor were.
The whole story was told in a very non-judgemental way (I mean, it wasn’t “You pig - look how you’re eating! Don’t you know children are starving in India?”) and it really affected me.
I wish I could find the reference. I have looked through the More with Less Cookbook and Living More with Less (Mennonite) as well as Freedom of Simplicity and Quaker Book of Wisdom (Quaker) and it doesn’t appear to be in any of them. I’m fairly sure that this wasn’t a Catholic story (Dorothy Day or Mother Teresa), but anyway, the point remains the same.
There are 2 ways to view wealth and poverty - one builds bridges and one builds guillotines. The leaders of the G-8 ought to think about that a little more. There’s not one of them that couldn’t stand to drop 5 pounds.
AND, the Japanese are all about Metabo these days - the government just passed all these laws about obesity!
Plus there’s the whole carbon footprint thing, and not using the terrific technology we have at our fingertips to have a teleconference.
It’s just wrong on so many levels. I’m not saying people should never enjoy themselves, but you don’t have to eat that much rich food in order to do it.
TBS
You know, a better way to have handled this (assuming that they really NEEDED to fly to Japan, where a special site was built, far away from ~gasp~ protesters and all the rest of the carbon T-Rex print) would have been to challenge the chefs to come up with nice food within a budget, and using basic foodstuffs that most people eat day in and day out.
It’s easy to create great food when you have an unlimited budget - try doing it with little money (relatively speaking) and using cornmeal, or oats, or manioc.
Just a thought.
TBS