Pope Francis launches stinging rebuke on the 'culture of waste' in Western world Pope Francis said consumerism has made people used to wasting food Said people should not throw away leftover food as 'our grandparents' did U.N-backed study said better storage and reducing over-sized portions would sharply reduce the vast amount of food going to waste Diners in U.S. restaurants waste 9 per cent of the meals, according to study Pope Francis launched a stinging attack on the 'culture of waste' today and said throwing good food away is like stealing from the poor. The pope made the comments during his weekly audience in St Peter's Square and criticised the culture of an increasingly consumerist world. He said: 'Our grandparents used to make a point of not throwing away leftover food. Consumerism has made us accustomed to wasting food daily and we are unable to see its real value. The pope urged people not to waste food and said doing so was like stealing from the poor and hungry Throwing away food is like stealing from the table of those who are poor and hungry. The comments are his latest call for greater social responsibility among the world's 1.2billion Roman Catholics. Since taking office in March, Pope Francis has said he wants the Church to defend the poor and to practise greater austerity itself. He has also made several calls for global financial reform. Around 1.3billion tonnes of food, or one third of what is produced for human consumption, gets lost or wasted every year, according to the United Nations' food agency. In the industrialised world the majority of waste is by consumers, often because they buy too much and have to throw away what they do not manage to eat. U.N. study found about 1.3billion tonnes of food is wasted every year A U.N.-backed study released today said simple measures such as better storage and reducing over-sized portions would sharply reduce the vast amount of food going to waste. In U.S. restaurants, diners wasted nine per cent of the meals they bought, partly because of a trend to increase the size of everything from cheeseburgers to soft drinks, said the report by the World Resources Institute and the U.N. Environment Programme. Pope Francis said the 'culture of waste' was especially deplorable given the prevalence of hunger in the world. The United Nations says hunger affects some 870million people, while 2billion suffer from at least one nutritional deficiency. The Argentinian-born pontiff warned that too much focus on money and materialism meant financial market dips were viewed as tragedies while human suffering had become normal and ignored. 'In this way people are discarded as if they were garbage,' he said.