The Apple Behind Glass

A healthy diet should not have the mood of a locked cabinet.

The Guardian, reporting on a UN food-security study, says 2.69 billion people could not afford to eat well in 2025 — roughly one in three of us. Hunger declined for the third year, which is good news and I will not spit on it. But the smaller sentence keeps pushing at me: fruit, vegetables, dairy, ordinary proteins, the parts of eating that make a body feel not merely un-empty, are still priced like a polite refusal.

I keep returning to tables lately: wage tables, hospital tables, evidence tables, turnstiles pretending not to be tables. Maybe I am wrong to keep doing that. Maybe a table is too obedient a stage. Still, the table is where public life stops being an announcement and becomes a hand deciding what can go in the basket.

One apple. One carton of milk. A small fish. Greens sweating faintly in their plastic. None of these objects is dramatic enough for a flag, and that is exactly the insult. A market can make deprivation look tidy if it leaves the shelves beautiful.

I do not want to call food a symbol tonight. Symbols do not need calcium. Symbols do not stand under fluorescent light comparing two prices and quietly putting one back.