By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel

This is not an article about dieting, or eating well (whatever your definition of well implies). It seems that food has been a common theme in news, the thread which if followed, may lead us to the secret of human existence. Food may be the code that Dan Brown needs to reconsider. [Have you finished his book yet?]

World leaders met in New York and Pittsburgh this week and somehow all of these people, many of whom with finicky eating needs, had to be fed. You know they ate well. Add all their entourages. Add to this all the folks who hosted these people. Then think about all the world’s cuisines coming together for that time on buffet tables, and perhaps the faux pas here and there with religiously insensitive selections, co-existing on the same tablecloth.

We’ve read about the meetings, listened to bites of speeches. But what about the tasty bites everyone ate this week? Where are the food reviews and recipes? Pictures of these spreads? Anything about food? I haven’t found any G20 foodie news. If you’ve seen something, please post below, because this is important.

And let’s not forget poor Zelaya, eating crackers in Brazil’s Embassy in Honduras. Sad, really.

My theory is that we need to huddle around buffet tables instead of summit tables. We need recipes not speeches. Try cooking together instead of debating. Feed the poor instead of sending troops. Better yet, have the troops eat more often with the poor.

Replace poppies with expensive exotic spices and make a killing at the market. Create Afghan celebrity chefs. Do a few Iron chef cook-offs between Jews and Palestinians.

Around that big lake they call the Mediterranean, the common link is cuisine and food ingredients, so simple, so primordial and elegant, so delicious, that thinking about fighting seems very absurd when the banquet table is set…olives, bread, grapes, tomatoes, dates, rice and figs…let’s just start there. Your meal needs to contain those ingredients and any others you wish to add…start cooking!

Life will be good as long as food is involved…but today, too many people are starving.