CNS STORY: More moderate lifestyles means ending food waste, says cardinal

Cardinal Renato Martino, the recently retired president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, speaks at a Vatican press conference presenting Pope Benedict XVI's World Peace Day message. (CNS/Paul Haring)

By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- With poverty, hunger and environmental degradation on the rise worldwide, people must do all they can to not waste precious food, said Cardinal Renato Martino.

"In developed countries every year, 30 percent of foodstuffs are wasted, ending up in the garbage," he said, adding that during the Christmas holidays the amount of wasted food rises to 40 percent.

In the United States, however, up to half its food supply is wasted year round, he said.

Cardinal Martino, the recently retired president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, made his comments during a Vatican press conference Dec. 15 to present Pope Benedict XVI's message for World Peace Day 2010.

The cardinal said the pope is calling on people to adopt a more "sober" and moderate lifestyle.

The Italian cardinal said 1 billion people go to bed hungry every night and live on less than $1 a day; another 2 billion live on $2 a day, which means that "half of humanity practically lives in absolute poverty."

Just the food waste in Italy, some 240,000 tons a year, could have provided 600,000 hungry people with three meals a day, he said.

What is needed, he said, are families who curb food waste in their own homes by teaching children at a young age the enormous value of food.

The cardinal said parents should be teaching their children the same lessons he and his siblings learned as kids: not to litter, to take only as much as one will eat, and to finish everything on one's plate.

"This was a great thing, it created a foundation" upon which to build respect for the environment and for the plight of others, specifically the millions of people going hungry every day, he said.

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