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We must eat and drink to stay alive—that's how we obtain the proteins, amino acids, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, minerals and fluids essential to the many processes taking place in our trillions of cells. The striking point here is that eating is not difficult, troublesome or inconvenient, but a function we enjoy. We derive great pleasure from the tastes of the matchless foods, drinks, fruits, vegetables, cakes, sweets and pastries that meet our daily nutritional requirements. Try to recall all the delicious foods and drinks you have tasted up to now. The fruit juices you drink to quench your thirst, the melons or watermelons you eat in the heat of summer, the lamb chops or fish cooked on a barbeque, ice cream, chocolate, pastries, rice pudding, ravioli, strawberry cake, rice, honey...
All these delicious foodstuffs that meet our needs, we obtain from plants and animals. In different parts of the globe there are different cereals, fruits, vegetables, and marine and terrestrial animals with different chemical structures and nutritional values. For example, human beings consume around 100 million tons of fish a year. 101
Yet only a small part of the biological variety existing today is actually used. According to the well-known environmentalist Norman Myers, for instance, human beings throughout the course of history have made use of 7,000 species of plants for nutritional purposes.102 On the other hand, it is estimated that the total number of edible plants is at least 75,000.103 Tropical regions in particular are full of thousands of plant species of a high nutritional value. Professor Peter Raven states that some of the 250,000 species of flowering plants can be grown in regions where agriculture is still not possible, to provide useful products.104
Most people cannot properly comprehend the importance of biodiversity. They imagine that all they require are a few cereals such as wheat, rice and maize, a number of fruits and vegetables, and a few herds to provide meat and milk. Of course these few species are sufficient for a person's nutritional requirements. However, these also depend, directly or indirectly, on a wide range of bacteria, animals, insects and micro-organisms. Maurizio Paoletti of Pauda University says that:
Thousands of plants and animals and microorganisms are associated in rural ecosystems in the cycle of crop or animal production. Most of these are still little known. 105
Consider the food chain that links together millions of living species in a flawless cycle. Any ecosystem contains producers, such as green plants, consumers, such as animals, and breaking-down organisms such as bacteria and fungi. Green plants, seaweed, algae and some photosynthetic bacteria are matchless food factories, producing millions of sugar molecules every second.106 Each year, photosynthesizing organisms produce about 170 billion metric tons of carbohydrates—about 30 metric tons for every person on Earth.107
Humans, on the other hand, constitute the final link in the food chain. For example, the zander—a freshwater bass and an excellent source of protein for humans—feeds on smaller fish that in turn, feed on invertebrate animals that eat algae. In short, a species we eat for nutritional purposes is closely linked to a great many other living species, from marine organisms too small to be seen with the naked eye to small invertebrates. This same state of affairs applies to all living things that provide us with the vegetable and animal foodstuffs we consume every day.
By setting aside familiarity and prejudice and looking at the living world, we encounter a very great many plants and animals that meet our nutritional needs immaculately, with their chemical structures, attractive smells and delicious flavors. Neither this marvelous harmony nor the countless details of the planet's food chain can be explained in terms of chance. These living things have been specially created and given to us as matchless blessings.
It is God, infinitely compassionate and merciful, Who creates the plants and animals that are the sources of the foodstuffs we require. This is revealed in a number of verses:
God is He Who created the heavens and the Earth and sends down water from the sky and by it brings forth fruits as provision for you... (Surah Ibrahim, 32)
It is He Who produces gardens, both cultivated and wild, and palm-trees and crops of diverse kinds, and olives and pomegranates, both similar and dissimilar. (Surat al-An‘am, 141)
Have they not seen how We created for them, by Our own handiwork, livestock which are under their control? We have made them tame for them and some they ride and some they eat. And they have other uses for them, and milk to drink. So will they not be thankful? (Surah Ya Sin, 71-73)