1 of 4. Pope Francis shows a thumbs-up sign as he arrives to lead his Wednesday general audience in Saint Peter's Square at the Vatican June 5, 2013. 
 
 VATICAN CITY | 
 
 VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis denounced on Wednesday what he called a "culture of waste" in an increasingly consumerist world and said throwing away good food was like stealing from poor people. 
 
 "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," Francis said at his weekly audience in St. Peter's Square. 
 
 "Throwing away food is like stealing from the table of those who are poor and hungry," he said. 
 
 Since taking office in March, Pope Francis has said he wants the 1.2-billion-strong Roman Catholic Church to defend the poor and to practice greater austerity itself. He has also made several calls for global financial reform. 
 
 Around 1.3 billion metric tonnes (1.43 billion tons) 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 industrialized 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. 
 
 A U.N.-backed study released on Wednesday 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 percent 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 Program. 
 
 Francis said the "culture of waste" was especially deplorable given the prevalence of hunger in the world. The United Nations says hunger affects some 870 million people, while 2 billion 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. 
 
 (Reporting by Catherine Hornby in Vatican City, Alister Doyle in Oslo, Terrence Edwards in Ulan Bator, Deborah Zabarenko in Washington; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky and Gareth Jones) ||||| The pontiff dedicated his weekly audience in St Peter’s Square to the United Nations World Environment Day to draw attention to the excesses of consumerism and food wastage. 
 
 “This culture of waste has made us insensitive even to the waste and disposal of food, which is even more despicable when all over the world, unfortunately, many individuals and families are suffering from hunger and malnutrition,” the Pope said. 
 
 “Once our grandparents were very careful not to throw away any leftover food. Consumerism has led us to become used to an excess and daily waste of food, to which, at times we are no longer able to give a just value. 
 
 “Throwing away food is like stealing from the table of the poor and the hungry,” he said. 
 
 Since taking office in March, Pope Francis has called for the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics to do more to defend the poor and to practise greater austerity itself. He has also made several calls for global financial reform. 
 
 The Pope dedicated his Wednesday audience, which attracted thousands of pilgrims from around the world, to the UN’s World Environment Day. 
 
 The audience added a personal element for the Argentinian-born pontiff as 30 Italian relatives came to the Vatican from northern Italy to greet him. The Pope was born in Buenos Aires to Italian migrants. 
 
 “According to an Argentinian source who studied our family tree, my great grandfather was the brother of Pope Francis’s great-grandfather,” said Luigi Bergoglio from Santena in the region of Piedmont. 
 
 The Pope urged people to care for the environment and reduce waste. 
 
 “Are we truly cultivating and caring for creation? Or are we exploiting and neglecting it? 
 
 “Cultivating and caring for creation is God’s indication given to each one of us not only at the beginning of history. It means nurturing the world with responsibility and transforming it into a garden, a habitable place for everyone.” 
 
 Coldiretti, Italy’s largest agricultural organisation, welcomed the Pope’s speech and his recognition of farmers’ contribution to agriculture and cultivation. 
 
 “The globalisation of markets has reduced responsibility, honesty and transparency and provoked the international crisis,” said Sergio Marini, the president of Coldiretti. “I am grateful to the pope for recognising our work.” 
 
 Around 1.3 billion 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 his speech, Pope Francis denounced the fact that a 10-point drop in stock markets was widely considered “a tragedy” while homeless people dying on our streets was no longer news. 
 
 “Human ecology and environmental ecology walk hand in hand”, he said.
– If you've ever thrown out good food, Pope Francis says you're a thief. "Throwing away food is like stealing from the table of those who are poor and hungry," he said during an audience at the Vatican this week, in which he blamed a "culture of waste." He's got a point, since one study says as much as half the planet's food ends up in the trash. The United Nations' food agency has a more reserved figure, noting that one-third of human food is wasted, according to Reuters. Since becoming pope, Francis has made defending the poor a priority, calling for global financial reform, but yesterday he said people are "insensitive even to the waste and disposal of food," according to the Telegraph. "[It's] even more despicable when all over the world, unfortunately, many individuals and families are suffering from hunger and malnutrition... In this way people are discarded as if they were garbage."