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A world of a billion empty plates

Food insecurity threatens one in 10 of us.

Thursday 09/29/2022

 

If you are in Spain and someone asks you: Have you eaten today? Are you sure you will eat? Your answer will probably be that you have eaten or are going to eat, as one of the 900,000 people facing some form of hunger or malnutrition in this European country. But if you were one of the 550 million Africans who suffer from moderate hunger, and they make up 40 percent of the continent’s total population, your answer would be different.

 

Middle and low-income countries face a horrific fate today, with Asia affecting roughly 10 percent, or about 500 million, of its 5 billion population, 60 percent of the entire world’s population.

As for Latin America and the Caribbean, Baher Kamal believes in “Inter Press” that the percentage of those who suffer from moderate to severe hunger and food insecurity is 9 percent of the region’s total population of 550 million, and this percentage barely reaches 2.5 percent of the population. In North America and Europe, it is estimated that 8.9 percent and 10.5 percent of the world’s total population will face hunger in 2021.

The truth is that a billion people at the moment are facing a food scarcity crisis, if they find any food at all, regardless of whether the mainstream media is now pretending that their fate is the result of just one war or is it because of the usual practice of speculation and greed that raises food prices. .

Millions of hungry people may not realize that the world produces enough food to cover all the needs of the planet’s population. And they don’t realize that more than a third of all food production is wasted, dumped in bins and lost in inadequate storage facilities.

The international scientific community warns every day that climate change, severe droughts, catastrophic floods and other factors are exacerbating an acute shortage of money to save lives, as armed conflicts erupt and spending on weapons of mass destruction is unprecedented, reaching more than $2 trillion last year alone.

The world is in the wrong direction

An Empty Plate: Why we are losing the battle for our food system, why it matters, and how we can win it back by Tracy LedgerThe look reflects a state of great need

 

Food security is defined as adequate access to food in terms of quality and quantity, while moderately food insecure people face uncertainty about access to food and sacrifice food quality and quantity to get by, and those suffering usually run out of food They are severely food insecure and, at worst, go a day or days without eating.

A hunger gap between the sexes in 2021

  • 31.9 percent of women in the world experienced moderate or severe food insecurity
  • 27.6 percent of men experienced the same phenomenon

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) asserts that “the world is heading in the wrong direction” and has just released the above-mentioned figures in its 2022 report, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World.

New estimates for 2021 indicate that the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity has remained relatively unchanged compared to 2020, according to FAO reports that have identified that acute food insecurity has increased, providing further evidence of the deteriorating situation of those already facing hardship serious.

And remember that an estimated 29.3 percent of the world’s population was moderately or severely food insecure in 2021. 11.7 percent of this population faced acute food insecurity. In other words, extreme hunger has doubled in 10 of the world’s worst climate regions over the past six years.

According to a report by Oxfam on September 16, 2022, ten of the world’s worst climate regions have experienced a 123 percent increase in acute hunger over the past six years.

Women and children with empty stomachs

 

A growing gender gap
A growing gender gap 

 

On the other hand, there is a growing gender gap in the field of food insecurity; In 2021, 31.9 percent of the world’s women were moderately or severely food insecure, compared to 27.6 percent of men. It is a gap of more than 4 percentage points, compared to 3 percentage points in 2020, according to the same report.

The latest estimates revealed that 14.6 percent of newborns were born with a low birth weight in 2015, a slight decrease from 17.5 percent in 2000.

While optimal breastfeeding, including exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life, is critical to a child’s survival, health promotion and cognitive development, health and children’s organizations are again raising the alarm globally about what they classify as scams. “Appalling, deceptive, exploitative, aggressive, misleading and pervasive” marketing used by baby dairy companies with the sole aim of increasing their already high profits.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations indicates that the prevalence of breastfeeding worldwide increased from 37.1 percent in 2012 to 43.8 percent in 2020. However, more than half of children under six months of age worldwide were not exclusively breastfed, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. “Stunting that is disproportionate to one’s age undermines children’s physical and cognitive development, increases their risk of death from common infections, and exposes them to overweight and non-communicable diseases later in life,” the report added.

 

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