While chairing a meeting of the National Council for Food and Nutrition Security in Brasilia earlier this week, Brazilian President Luis Inacio da Silva recalled the extreme poverty he lived in in the 1960s. He burst into tears.

“I stood there the whole time, embarrassed to say I was hungry.”

“I was brand new at the Villares plant (metalworking company) and my colleagues were always offering me something. ‘Hey, Lula, aren’t you eating?’ I’d reply, ‘I’m not hungry.’ But every time they put the mortadella sandwich in their mouths, I imagined myself biting into it. I stood there the whole time, embarrassed to say I was hungry. And I went back to work. It happened several times,” the Brazilian executive recounted.

He again succumbed to emotion, remembering that he had eaten bread for the first time at the age of seven.

"I was saying today that I ate bread for the first time when I was seven years old. Because where I was born, there wasn't even money to buy bread or a place to buy it," Lula said.

It should not be a government commitment, but a constitutional obligation.

Clearly, the statesman was not born with a golden spoon in his mouth, which explains his commitment to fighting poverty and hunger.

For him, the fight against hunger should not "be a government commitment, but a constitutional obligation." "In a government where someone is dying of hunger, the president should be removed from office," decreed Mr. Da Silva. The leader will soon celebrate his 80th birthday. He realizes with regret how little time he has to fight hunger in his country.