THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 21, 1996 TAG: 9601190296
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Ronald L. Speer
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
A couple of days without real food during a hospital sojourn convinced me that modern America is a tough place to live for people who are hungry.
Most of us aren't hungry, of course. The majority of us eat better than any prince or potentate or pontiff of the past, despite their wealth and their legions of slaves and servants whose only assignment was to pander to royal tastes.
We have fresh fruit and vegetables every day of the year. We can pick from a multitude of pastas and potatoes. Breads unmatched in any king's kitchen are available everywhere. Meats from around the world come to us untainted, often cut and trimmed while we watch.
Those of us fortunate enough to live near coastal waters can pick and choose fish of all kinds, and dine on shrimp and crabs and oysters and clams and scallops that would have been the envy of history's richest rajah.
We can slake our thirst with sparkling beverages that would have excited the most critical of queens, the most jaded of judges.
We can top off our meal with cakes and pies and cookies and chocolate and puddings and ice cream that once were the symbols of the most-decadent of the rich.
Meals like that are common fare for common folk these days - providing we make a decent wage.
Fine dining at home or as a paying customer has become so common for most of us that billions of dollars are spent persuading people to choose certain brands, or to eat in certain restaurants, or to sample certain exotic dishes.
Since I'm one of millions of Americans who can afford my every taste, I never thought much about food commercials that promote a product by starting off with a singing question: ``Aren't you hungry?''
That is, not until I felt hunger pangs while relaxing comfortably in a hospital for a few days with nothing to do but watch television.
I wasn't actually hungry, because they were pumping all kinds of good stuff into my veins through a tube and a needle.
But I FELT hungry, because they wouldn't let me eat or drink anything while they ran some tests and found an infected pancreas, easily treatable.
And every TV break, it seemed, featured a food commercial.
There are literally dozens of different hamburgers in America, topped with mayo and lettuce and tomatoes and cheese, that can make your mouth water when you're hungry.
One evening I would have given half my fortune for a rack of ribs swimming in barbecue sauce that were pushed right under my nose, so tempting that I could smell the smoke.
I'm not a big fan of pizza, but the dozenth TV offering one afternoon of a thick slab of crust, sauce, peppers and pepperoni made me wonder if they delivered on the fourth floor of Chesapeake General.
Roast chicken, chicken strips, fried chicken seemed to fly out of the screen every few minutes. Soft drinks, various beers and bags of chips tempted at every turn of the channel.
Steak houses, Italian restaurants, seafood specialists, Chinese chefs offered me my pick of the world's most enticing banquets.
Candy bars and ice creams and a variety of desserts made my stomach rumble.
I was lucky, of course. I wasn't really hungry. I just thought I was.
But for those among us who ARE hungry, those commercials must be a terrible temptation.
The food pantries in our cities and towns do a lot to ease that hunger, particularly at Christmas when we all think about the less fortunate among us.
But those commercials reminded me that an empty stomach is just as painful in January and February as it was during the holidays.
``Aren't you hungry?'' isn't a jolly jingle to someone who is. by CNB