G8 summit: Gordon Brown has eight-course dinner before food crisis talks

[seriousstan]

Source: telegraph

Gordon Brown and his fellow world leaders have sparked outrage after it was disclosed they enjoyed a six-course lunch followed by an eight-course dinner at the G8 summit where the global food crisis tops the agenda.

The Prime Minister was served 24 different dishes during his first day at the summit – just hours after urging the world to reduce the "unnecessary demand" for food and calling on British families to cut back on their wasteful use of food.

---cut---

The dinner consisted of 18 dishes in eight courses including caviar, smoked salmon, Kyoto beef and a "G8 fantasy dessert".
The banquet was accompanied by five different wines from around the world including champagne, a French Bourgogne and sake.

The dinner came just hours after a "working lunch" consisting of six courses including white asparagus and truffle soup, crab and a supreme of chicken.





Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/2262534/G8-summit-Gordon-Brown-has-eight-course-dinner-before-food-crisis-talks.html

[Pavulon]

1. mmm tasty..(nt)

[saigon68]

28. Later he proved he was a Large " Bag of Fart " ( N/T)

[wtmusic]

2. And they arrived in ethanol-powered limos. nt

[ryanmuegge]

74. Draining the food supply as much as possible and polluting the planet even more than regular gas.

Fucking the planet and the poor every way they can in every situation.

[Zynx]

3. I hate the decadence of the diplomatic world.

[OwnedByFerrets]

4. Let them eat cake...nt

[Tutonic]

24. Yellow Cake?

[undeterred]

5. Let them eat canned vegetables and hot dogs.

[Amonester]

63. And then, it will be:

Let them eat toxic roadside mud stirred in dirty water (today's main menu in Haiti...).

[Earth_First]

6. No doubt * was clamoring "What's for dinner?" as soon as he arrived. n/t

[Ilsa]

13. "Whad'ya mean there's no barbeque sauce?" or

"Whad'ya mean there's no cream gravy?" or "Whad'ya mean there's no beer?"

[Scairp]

31. Plus there was no ketchup bottle on his table

That surely blew his little mind.

[MUAD_DIB]

22. How long ago was it when all he could do was talk about a pig roast?

I really hope that there is a Hell set aside for him. And that's a tough thing to hope for when you're an atheist.

[paparush]

71. Yes..and what's to drinky *hic* drinky? eh?

[LSdemocrat]

7. FYI, the Telegraph is pretty much a tool of the British right wing, almost equivalent to Fox "News"

[struggle4progress]

19. Unfair to single Brown out, of course. Here's The Guardian:

G8 leaders feast at world's top table

After a day spent discussing food shortages, the world's most powerful leaders sat down to a lavish eight course meal

... The most powerful stomachs in the world were today compelled to stave off the great Hokkaido Hunger by lining themselves with an eight course dinner prepared by 25 chefs.

This multi-pronged attack on global leadership pangs was launched only hours after a not inconsiderable lunch - four courses, washed down with Chateau Grillet 2005 — which had clearly fully failed to quell appetites possibly enlarged by agonising over the starving citizens of the world.

The G8 gathering has been described by some as a "world food shortages summit" as leaders seek to combat spiralling prices of basic foodstuffs in the developed world and starvation in the developing world.

But perhaps not since Marie Antoinette was supposed to have leaned from a Versailles palace window and suggested that her breadless peasants eat cake can leaders have demonstrated such insensitivity to daily hardship than at the luxury Windsor Hotel on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/07/g8.japan

[T_i_B]

32. It's a British paper, so it's natural for them to single out Brown

Mind you, Brown tends to get singled out for everything that goes wrong of late. The thread at the top of the UK forum is asking if Labour are "doomed" at the next election and the general impression is that yes they are.

[dixiegrrrrl]

8. a "supreme of chicken" ?????

and what the hell is a G8 Fantasy desert?

Inquiring minds want to know.

[AmyCamus]

16. It's boiled chicken and broth.

Not as 'supreme' as the name implies

[Bear down under]

27. A "suprême" of chicken (or duck or pheasant or turkey)

is the muscle of the breast, stripped in one piece from the bone when raw and cooked and served in one piece. Each bird gives two of them, one on either side of the breast bone. The term is French, as in suprême de vollaile. The literal meaning is the same as in English (supreme) but whether it implies that this is the choicest cut of a chicken (it is certainly the most expensive) or simply the part that is uppermost when a bird is roasted I don't know.

How you actually cook and serve it is up to the chef. My English-language Larousse Gastronomique describes 11 classic recipes and notes that sometimes the wing is included.

As for the "G8 Fantasy Dessert", that could be anything the chef wants to call that -- though there is a classic Chinese dessert called "eight treasure pudding" which is based on rice but including eight other ingredients such as fruit and chestnuts. My father, who grew up in China, used to call it rice pudding in drag.

[psychopomp]

9. In all fairness,

Japanese dinners typically consist of a number of small items served in succession. Portion sizes are nothing compared to Western (read: American) dinners. The salmon may have been nothing more than a mouthful or two, for example.

[Zhade]

76. Yeah. You really believe that was the case?

I sure don't.

[Demit]

10. Should he have thrown the food back into his hosts' faces? I mean, really.

The Telegraph noted the criticism of 'opposition politicians and charities', but had no suggestions regarding what Brown was supposed to do with the food he was served.

[Ilsa]

11. Maybe they should try fasting as a show of solidarity to those in want. nt

[bitchkitty]

65. Or serve tuna sandwiches and Ruffles. n/t

[sourmilk]

12. Too funny!!!

"Stop wasting food, UK...oh wait - please pass the truffles and foie gras...and I'll have some more crab, as well..."

[2Design]

14. tax dollars at work and people wonder why I am all for reducing the right govmt spending

not libraries and parks or other things that are good for the whole BUT this BS at dinners and flying all over the place and all of their benefits - they protect themselves while throwing us under the bus

[RaleighNCDUer]

15. Let them eat leftovers... nt

[wordpix]

17. pigs feeding at the trough, as usual. Great fodder for cartoonists

[PATRICK]

18. Ernie Kovacs

and the food hunger round table table skit which degenerated into a complex lunch discussion and the Onion video and many others.

World leadership today has no sense, no boundaries of self ridicule and will not be bested by the world's humorists.

[depakid]

20. Wonder if the torygraph would have made any noise had the conservatives been in charge?

Yeah, right.

[Lorien]

21. Should have had a bowl of rice and some of those "dirt cookies" that

the people of Haiti are forced to survive on. The G8 leaders need some SERIOUS perspective!

[struggle4progress]

23. One could do an awesome protest of the G8 around the idea: "Eat what the poor eat"

[Number23]

29. Excellent suggestion

Should have had a bowl of rice and some of those "dirt cookies"

A nice bowl of well-seasoned perspective and empathy would have been just the thing.

[UpInArms]

25. did the dialogue end after

they all patted their fat bellies and lit their cigars - gazing around the room and exclaiming:

I wonder what the poor folk are eating tonight!

[KoKo]

26. Notice how the "world leaders" including our own never eat American Beef

it's either Kobe Steaks or now Kyoto beef. Wonder why that is? :eyes:

[Bear down under]

33. Kobe beef is supposed to be the best in the world

Naturally, it is also the most expensive, as the cattle are fed specal diets including beer and sake and given daily massages so they don't suffer from muscle tension that might rob the meat of tenderness...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_beef

As the G8 is being held in Japan, one supposes the caterers want to show off a famous local product; and of course the stratospheric price adds snob value.

Here's an American view: http://members.tripod.com/~BayGourmet/wagyu.html

[KoKo]

72. Yes...that's lovely...I wish the "rest of us" could always by "Massaged Beef."

Your arrogance is incredible. :puke:

[Bear down under]

75. *My* arrogance?

I can only report what I read, and the reputation of Kobe beef is of long standing. Nothing to do with me, mate.

You might care to look up page 166 and 167 of Foods of the World: The Cooking of Japan by Rafael Steinberg and the Editors of Time-Life Books, published back in 1969 by Time Inc of New York. There you will find a description (complete with pictures) of how the "... shimofuri (fallen frost) beef, considered by connnoisseurs to be the best in the world ..." is grown and prepared.

Nor did I have anything to do with selecting the menu for the G8 lunch and dinner, which can be found here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

After all the fuss, the menu doesn't seem to mention beef at all, Kobe or otherwise; but I do see that an American (Californian) wine, Ridge Monte Bello 1997, was served at the dinner. As all the other wines on the menu are white, I gather this was the red wine. A mere $250 the bottle, ex vineyard. http://www.ridgewine.com/taf/store.taf?_function=detail...

[Number23]

30. First thread I've rec'd in about 3 weeks.

Thanks for posting this.

ETA: What in the crispy fried hell??!

"African leaders including the heads of Ethiopia, Tanzania and Senegal who had taken part in talks during the day were not invited to the function."

So the dinner, to discuss world hunger and food prices, was only for already well-fed Europeans and North Americans and not representatives of the countries most seriously affected by rising food prices??

:wtf:

[Chovexani]

69. I'm shocked the African leaders weren't pressed into service

As waitstaff by these fuckers. :puke:

[AlphaCentauri]

34. Britain's Brown tells families to stop wasting food to help calm price rises

Source: herald tribune

LONDON: Britain must stop wasting millions of tons of food to help lower world food prices, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Monday.

Brown said the country throws out 4.1 million tons of good food each year — or an average of 420 pounds (US$832) per household.

The waste is adding pressure to global food prices, he said, as his government published a food strategy report warning that rising demand and fast-growing global population meant affordable produce could no longer be taken for granted.

The report also said world food output must be increased dramatically.

"If food production in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world reached its potential, global food output would be much higher, far fewer people would go hungry and the threat of food-related political and social instability around the world would recede," Brown said in a foreword to the report.



Read more: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/07/07/europe/EU-Britain-Food.php

[DJ13]

35. Gordon Brown has eight-course dinner before food crisis talks

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/2262534/G8-summit-Gordon-Brown-has-eight-course-dinner-before-food-crisis-talks.html

[varelse]

39. Yes, and one with a very "exclusive" guest list

African leaders including the heads of Ethiopia, Tanzania and Senegal who had taken part in talks during the day were not invited to the function.

[MUAD_DIB]

45. Maybe the Western World is screwn with the kind of world leaders...ahem....

of the caliber that we see before us.


But don't worry. No matter what ills that we witness or calamities that arise you can be sure that they will be well fed and happy.

[wordpix]

60. WTF? Don't invite the African leaders to your 8 course meal & diplomacy reigns-sarcasm

[HCE SuiGeneris]

56. Don't forget the 6 course lunch meal prior to the 8 course dinner...

:sigh:

[MNBrewer]

36. The people have no food? Tell them to stop wasting cake!

[hooraydems06]

44. When I went to my junior high graduation dance formal...

... the banquet hall we used had a table full of pieces of chocolate cake. I was the only one out of about 200 people to eat at least some of it, and another student who saw me mentioned how I was "pigging out". The rest of the table full of plates of cake were all thrown out. I'm a US citizen, but I'm ethnically descended from a country in a different hemisphere, where such decadent amounts of waste are unheard of, and I realized how disgusting part of the culture of the West is... the disgusting levels of waste. I think some of the more well-off people will finally be forced to clamp down on that kind of waste; it's just a shame it takes this kind of rise in fuel and gas prices to make them do so...

[pop goes the weasel]

50. don't kid yourself

The well-off never have to clamp down on their own waste. They will happily, however, clamp down on what they decide is our waste.

Me, I'm a lower class piece of white trash scum. I'd have stood there with you scarfing down cake, and I'd have wrapped up and taken with me as much as I could. I know that status-conscious middle and upper class whites act like eating is a disgraceful activity best performed as little as possible, and never in public, but that's their problem. When you don't know if your dad will still have a job at the end of the day, you learn that food is for eating, not for displaying.

[hooraydems06]

78. Um, yeah but my point is that not as many people are as well-off...

... as they used to be. Which is true, and when that happens, they will indeed clamp down on waste. And it's already happening.

FYI, about the j/h/s graduation dance, I wasn't "scarfing down" cake... I just had one piece (if even; it was a while ago, so I don't remember exactly how much). Oh, and everything I was eating was already paid for (by my parents; we were and still are middle class, not lower class). Oh, and there was more than just cake there; people had main courses and they ate them, so it's not that eating was a disgraceful activity; they just didn't "feel like" eating the dessert for some reason. There was only that one guy that made the comment and he was a bit of a jerk. I didn't have like 8 pieces of cake (or even 2) so his comment was more of the typical bully/scumbag than a class thing; every school has at least one... actually I wasn't really into the whole scene earlier and I didn't anything of the main course, which was also paid for by me/my family, so since I hadn't had any of the earlier food, I didn't mind eating a bit of the cake, especially since it was pretty good and no one else was eating any of it, and I didn't want to see every last piece of it go to waste.

My point is that, whatever class you are, you shouldn't waste if possible. I think people are learning that, not because the extremely well-off are changing, but that those who used to be well-off aren't so much any more.

[dixiegrrrrl]

37. Someone help me out here......

This makes as much sense as when my mother said said "think of all the poor starving children in China" because I would not eat my spinach.
Us kids said, naturally, send the damn stuff to the kids in China.

Now, exactly how is throwing uneaten food in the trash going to lower food prices?
It; already been bought, so it doesn't matter if it goes in my stomach, the dog's stomach or the garbage can.

Seems to me that buying less food would reduce demand=lower prices.
But that is a formula that only seems to work in high school economics.

[MUAD_DIB]

46. Well, it is a Politician's band aid approach of sorts.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

58. It's fairly typical New Labour insanity.

Doesn't make any sense, impossible to implement, wouldn't make a difference even if it was implemented. Yup.

[AndyTiedye]

38. Perhaps a Lot of Their Food is Inedible

"Lord have mercy for the people in England for the terrible food that they have to eat." Frank Zappa

[hooraydems06]

79. Which apparently never stopped them...

... from buying it in the first place.

[cliss]

40. Well, there's nothing wrong with

trying to conserve food. I think there are all kinds of things any society can do to preserve it. As long as Brown doesn't sit on his ass and expect everyone else to be more prudent, but not him.

[Bear down under]

41. .....an average of 420 pounds (US$832) per household??

Surely whoever wrote up that story knows that if you divide X million tons by the number of households, you get an answer of Y pounds weight, not Y pounds sterling or its equivalent in US dollars?

[Kolesar]

43. It is hard to believe that the copy editor did not flag that mistake

While we're at it, how many Euros for that gyro?

[ContraBass Black]

66. I might send this to my Technical Editing teacher.

As copyediting blunders go, this is pretty funny.

[RebelOne]

70. I am a copy editor and we are not paid to do math. n/t

[kevinbgoode]

42. we should take up a collection. . .

perhaps donating some cans of Spam would help feed the British as they face another trial on the level of Their Finest Hour.

[Art_from_Ark]

53. No doubt there are some Vikings at a local diner

who would appreciate it!

[Fumesucker]

47. I'm watching my grandkids this summer...

Just today I caught my five year old grandson getting ready to throw a perfectly good slice of cheese in the trash because it was *torn*.

Go genuinely hungry a few times and it's funny what it does to your attitude about food.

Waste, particularly food, drives me up the wall.

[WorseBeforeBetter]

52. You and me both.

My sister-in-law's family (mostly Republican) allows the kids to pile food on their plates and just dump it into the trash if they're full (or bored with it). My family laid down the law -- take only what you can eat and go back for seconds (or thirds) if still hungry. Or have it as leftovers.

And ugh, buffets. I'm not big on them (for many reasons), but the waste is astounding.

[Tutonic]

48. Enjoy it now Gordo! Cause you're days are numbered.

You ain't no Tony Blair. You're ass will be gone a lot sooner.

[shanti]

49. clean those plates!

[sakura]

51. It will be interesting to see if a prolonged economic downturn (depression) has an effect

...on people's consumption. I find our wasteful culture sickening-- even cooking magazines have wasteful tips like using dry rice to clean out vases and coffee pots, making soup stocks out of good meat (not bones) then throwing them out because they have less flavor once they've been boiled (though they still contain protein), etc. We are so divorced from the production of our food that we don't even realize that we are being wasteful. How likely would a person be to throw out a loaf of stale bread if they had to grow the wheat, grind the flour and bake the bread? There's lots of things you can do with stale bread-- stuffing, breadcrumbs, bread pudding, panzanella, to name a few. But instead, in cooking magazines, the suggestion is that you buy new bread, then dry it out in the oven to make these dishes. Huh?

edited for clarity

[Hannah Bell]

54. There's plenty of waste, but that's not the reason people are

starving in ethiopia (or wherever).

But it's good for the ruling classes to make people think so.

Not the reason prices are going up, either.

It's hard to believe politicians say such things & aren't laughed out of office.

[Lorien]

55. It's pretty much the same as saying "Finish your dinner! There are

children starving in Africa"! How about slowing climate change so that the natural disasters happen a little less often? How about banning seeds with "suicide genes" and Roundup Ready GM crops-big ag practices are causing once fertile lands to turn into deserts. How about encouraging people to eat less meat-especially beef? How about wind, solar, and more hybrid vehicles instead of ethanol? How about allowing contraceptives to be distributed in third world nations again to cut down on population growth?

Oh yes, anything that interferes with profits and the right wing agenda is a BAD thing, so we'll just tell the people not to waste as much food (which, mind you, I'm all for- a lot of wasted food COULD go to food banks in the nations where the waste is occurring. It just won't do much for the third world).

[Fumesucker]

59. Food, at least to some extent, is fungible..

The more that is wasted in the developed countries, the less there is available for everyone.

Not to disagree with your other points because I don't, but wasting food when others are going hungry is immoral.

A lot of places they now lock the dumpsters where the out of date food is thrown away to keep people who really need it from salvaging it.

[Lorien]

61. The locked dumpster policy is absolutely immoral

many businesses do that here in Florida. In Orlando, it's illegal to feed the poor in any public place that isn't sanctioned by the city (we have a few small "panhandling zones", but organized efforts to feed the poor downtown aren't permitted). I don't think that anyone actually sets out to waste food, but an enormous amount of food waste happens because of thoughtless corporate policies or an overblown fear of litigation. Those are a few of the problems that need to be tackled on a local level ASAP. The situation grows more desperate for many by the day.

[Hannah Bell]

68. the waste comes after it's bought, harvested, planted.

the folks in ethiopia have less, not because of the "waste," but because of the mechanics of buying, harvesting, planting.

Starving folks typically have: little land, little money.

If I quit wasting my food, that doesn't give them land or money.

The international ag market responds to money demand. If I quit wasting, it doesn't bring the price down to ethiopian peasants' levels, & if it did, growing would no longer be profitable, because big ag relies so much on costly oil & machinery. The growers simply produce less, because growing more doesn't bring a profit - same thing happened in the Depression.

[bread_and_roses]

57. Exactly. (n/t)

[T_i_B]

67. I actually agree with Gordon Brown on this one!

Even if only a few people will listen to him on this one, even if it won't be a miracle cure for the food crisis it will certainly help if we are all less wasteful with food.

And to that end I might as well get on my high horse and reccomend to DUers that we all try and eat more offal. Not only does eating offal use the whole of the animal rather then a few choice cuts, but it's kinder on the wallet then beef fillet too!

[Infinite Hope]

62. The U.N. does need some revamping. They can eat cold sandwiches and milk. That's better than many

have it.

[Wabbajack_]

64. Uncessary Demand?

[Arkana]

73. "In other news, the needle has snapped off the Irony Meter".

[Algorem]

77. G. ate. And ate and ate and ate. It's good to be king.

[skoalyman]

80. Too bad someone didn't spike his food with laxative

:evilgrin: :hurts: :hurts: :hurts: :hurts: :hurts: :hurts: