In Gaza, where famine has replaced food and desperation has become routine, families are turning to anything that resembles nourishment, even if it poisons them. Cut off from fresh food, medicine, and baby formula, residents have begun ingesting IV fluids, misusing sweeteners, and relying on powdered eggs that arrive without labels or expiry dates. These are not dietary choices, they are acts of survival under siege.

In a territory deliberately starved by Israel’s blockade, emergency substitutes are being consumed with little understanding of their contents. Sucralose, wrongly called “almond sugar,” is flooding local markets in anonymous bags, while powdered eggs, never part of Gaza’s diet before the war, are now airdropped and rationed without clarity on their origin or safety. In one of the world’s most surveilled war zones, Gaza’s people are forced to gamble with their health to simply stay alive.

Perhaps most harrowing is the reported oral use of intravenous glucose solutions, designed for veins, not for drinking, now mixed with expired antibiotics and food colouring to create makeshift drinks for children. Nutritionist Hisham Hassouna warns that this practice, already widespread, risks irreversible damage to children’s immune systems and internal organs.

When starvation becomes policy, every bottle and powder becomes a question of life or death. The silence of the international community only deepens the crisis. Experts like Hassouna are raising alarms, but without urgent action, Gaza’s children will pay the price, not just in hunger, but in lasting harm from the very substances meant to keep them alive.