Under the crushing weight of siege and starvation, Gaza’s food crisis has turned deadly. With markets empty, electricity scarce, and medical care nearly unreachable, food safety is no longer a matter of quality — it's a matter of survival. Families, desperate to feed their children, are resorting to expired canned goods, insect-infested flour, and anything that might keep hunger at bay, regardless of the danger it carries.

In the absence of refrigeration or inspection, even identifying unsafe food has become a gamble. A swollen can may be a death sentence. Contaminated flour may hide the seeds of serious illness. With no guarantee of safety, traditional methods like boiling olive leaves or relying on home remedies are all that’s left for detoxifying the body. But when water itself is limited and vegetables are a rare luxury, even these precautions fall short.

Experts like Professor Abdel Raouf Al-Naameh warn that proper cooking can only do so much. Contaminated ingredients, even when baked into bread or boiled at high temperatures, still pose a serious risk. Yet symptoms like vomiting or fever often go untreated, as Gaza’s shattered health system struggles to function under constant bombardment and blockade.

This is Gaza’s daily choice: starvation or sickness. With each meal, families make impossible decisions, forced to weigh immediate hunger against long-term harm. In a place where food has become both weapon and threat, the simplest human act — eating — has turned into a fight for life.