Food prices are so high that some people are reduced to eating dirt

I am not joking but this is indeed the case in Haiti. I have been warning on these pages about food prices and the fact that the UN needs to take this in hand for months now, but now its getting worse and worse. It is now a security issue seriously. I quote:

With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some must take desperate measures to fill their bellies.

Charlene, 16 with a month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau.

The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places such as Cité Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene shares a two-room house with her baby, five siblings, and two unemployed parents, cookies made of dirt, salt, and vegetable shortening have become a regular meal.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!