What is fickle food?

This is a line from a poem, Fame is a Fickle Food. Suggested meaning is that one moment you are famous, next minute you are not. You can be easily passed by,

Fame is a fickle food

Upon a shifting plate

Whose table once a

Guest but no

A second time is set.

Whose crumbs the crows inspect

And with ironic caw

Flap past it

To the farmers corn -

Men eat of it any die.