Wastage of Food

As by title it’s clear what am about to write on, the reason is obvious that every day we watch in news regarding shortage of food, that works out to us humans losing or wasting about 1.3 billion tonnes of food each year. The trouble is that generating food is “expensive”.

Being human as a Pakistani if I talk about my own country we don’t have enough water supply of fresh water to grow vegetables and fruits. There are many poor areas in Pakistan where people don’t get enough food and have to sleep with empty stomach. Fighting food scarcity will be one of the central geopolitical issues of the future. Every day in festivals and other events like marriages lots of food is wasted with the colossal waste of food at weddings which otherwise should have been saved and given to the orphanage or shanty homes to feed their inmates. Some 15-20 per cent of food is wasted in such functions. In some cases, the waste is to the extent of 20-25 per cent when the number of dishes exceeds the number of guests invited to the marriage halls. Taking the total number of social functions held in Karachi city alone and the average wastage of food by 15-20 per cent the losses are in tons. Just try to imagine the losses countrywide.

As a Muslim if we consider our holy book Quran and follow the guidance of Holly Prophet (PBUH), Islam guides the believers to live their lives in moderation; regardless of whatever they intend to do. If Allah has blessed someone with abundance, the guidance of Islam states that neither should one live in a miserly state, nor should one live in excess as a spendthrift; but be conscious and grateful for the favours of Allah, and take the moderate path between the two.

Reference: Jami’ Tirmidhi, authenticated by al-Albani, It is stated that.

“Sayyidina Jabir (May Allah be pleased with him) reported that the Prophet (Peace be upon him) said, “When one of you eats his meal and a morsel falls down, he must pick it up and remove the doubtful portion and eat the rest. He must not leave it for the devil.”

Islam absolutely prohibits wastage in every aspect of one’s lives, whether it is with one’s time, one’s energy, one’s celebrations, one’s wealth, or even one’s food. Further if I consider the whole world in every religion it is prohibited of wasting food in any respect I read somewhere that by 2050 world population will be about 9 billion people. If we keep on wasting food at the same level as we do today, and if we want to feed everybody, we will have to produce 70 per cent more food. So if we stop wasting food, our job will be much easier. There are also many other problems regarding production of food like drastic climate change like global warming, drought, floods and other climate changes.

Conclusively I would like to say that to overcome this issue is not a big problem once when I was in a seminar of FAO(food and agriculture organization) one of the speakers said that food is the new gold. At that time it seemed to be for me a useless phrase but in view of current situation of food shortage speaker used the right words to describe food.As there are many poor countries where people died of hunger due to shortage of food and for them food is more than gold.We have to overcome this issue by taking serious steps otherwise it would be very difficult for our future generation to survive.