MADRID, Sep 23 (IPS) – Have you eaten today – or are you sure you will? The answer depends on where you were born and where you live now. If you are Hispanic or live here, you probably have or will, provided you are not one of the 900,000 inhabitants of this European country facing some form of hunger, malnutrition or undernourishment.
If instead you are among the 550 million plus Africans who suffer from moderate hunger (40 percent of the continent’s total population of 1,300 or more) or severe hunger (about 300 million or 24 percent of all Africans), your answer would probably be – Or for sure – go to bed hungry…today too.
A similar dark fate prevails in other “developing” regions, usually defined as middle and low income countries. In Asia, with roughly 10 percent or about 500 million of its total population of 5 billion, they represent 60 percent of the entire world’s population.
In the case of Latin America and the Caribbean, the percentage of people suffering from moderate to severe hunger and food insecurity amounts to 9 percent of the region’s total population of 550 million.
Just for the sake of comparison, these numbers barely reach 2.5% of the population of North America (600 million) and Europe (750 million).
In summary: It is estimated that between 702 and 828 million people in the world (equivalent to 8.9 percent and 10.5 percent of the total population, respectively) will face hunger in 2021.
Too many explanations, same results
These are numbers and numbers. The truth is that a billion people are right at the moment living in the darkness of food scarcity, if any food at all.
For them, regardless of whether the mainstream media is now pretending that their fate is caused by just one war or the usual practice of speculation and greed that drives up food prices.
Many millions of hungry people may not realize that the world produces enough food to cover all the needs of the planet’s inhabitants.
Not more than a third of all food production is wasted, dumped in rubbish bins and lost to inadequate storage facilities.
Regardless of whether the international scientific community warns every day that climate change, severe droughts, catastrophic floods and other factors are exacerbating the acute shortage of funds to save lives while fueling armed conflict and allocating unprecedented spending on weapons of mass destruction (more than $2 trillion in the year 2021) See: New World Chronicles: More Weapons Than Ever. An unparalleled hunger crisis
What is food insecurity?
Food security is defined as adequate access to food in terms of quality and quantity.
Moderate food insecurity: People with moderate food insecurity face doubts about their ability to obtain food, and are forced to compromise on the quality and/or quantity of food they consume.
Severe food insecurity: People who are severely food insecure usually run out of food and, at worst, go a day (or days) without eating.
wrong direction
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) asserts that “the world is heading in the wrong direction”, which – among other international bodies – has just released the above 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, FAO reports, adding that “acute food insecurity has increased, providing further evidence of a deteriorating situation mainly for those who They are already facing serious difficulties.”
“In 2021, an estimated 29.3 percent of the world’s population – 2.3 billion people – were moderately or severely food insecure, and 11.7 percent (923.7 million people) experienced acute food insecurity.”
In other words: extreme hunger has doubled in 10 of the world’s worst hot climates over the past six years.
According to a report by Oxfam on 16 September 2022, “Ten of the world’s worst climate hot spots – those with the highest number of UN appeals driven by extreme weather events – have experienced a 123 percent rise in acute hunger in the past six years alone.”
Hunger distinguishes
There is also a growing gender gap in 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 – a gap of more than 4 percentage points, compared to 3 percentage points in 2020, according to the report.
The most recent estimates of low birth weight revealed that 14.6 percent of newborns (20.5 million) were born with low birth weight in 2015, a slight decrease from 17.5 percent (22.9 million) in 2000.
Optimal breastfeeding practices, including exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life, are critical to a child’s survival, health promotion, and cognitive development.
But it is not. Indeed, the world’s health and children’s organizations have once again sounded the alarm over what they classify as “horrific, deceptive, exploitative, aggressive, misleading and pervasive” marketing ploys used by baby dairy companies with the sole aim of increasing their already high profits.
In fact, the Food and Agriculture Organization reports that the prevalence rate globally increased from 37.1 percent (49.9 million) in 2012 to 43.8 percent (59.4 million) in 2020. However, more than half of children under the age of six Months of age globally did not receive preventive protection. Benefits of exclusive breastfeeding according to the report, which adds the following:
Stunting, a condition of short stature for one’s age, undermines children’s physical and cognitive development, increases their risk of death from common infections, and exposes them to weight gain and non-communicable diseases later in life.
Child wasting is considered a life-threatening condition due to inadequate nutrient intake, poor nutrient absorption, and/or frequent or prolonged illness. Affected children are dangerously thin with weakened immunity and an increased risk of death. The prevalence of wasting among children under five was 6.7% (45.4 million) in 2020.
Children who are overweight or obese face immediate and long-term health effects, including an increased risk of developing non-communicable diseases later in life.
Globally, the prevalence of overweight among children under the age of five increased slightly from 5.4 percent (33.3 million) in 2000 to 5.7 percent (38.9 million) in 2020. Rising trends are observed in about half of countries worldwide.
Anemia: The prevalence of anemia among women aged 15-49 years was estimated at 29.9% in 2019.
The absolute number of anemic women has steadily increased from 493 million in 2000 to 570.8 million in 2019, which has implications for female morbidity and mortality and can lead to negative pregnancy and newborn outcomes.
Globally, adult obesity has nearly doubled in absolute terms from 8.7 percent (343.1 million) in 2000 to 13.1 percent (675.7 million) in 2016.
Children in rural areas and poor families are more likely to be stunted and wasted. Children and adults, particularly women, in urban areas and wealthier families are at risk of being overweight and obese, respectively.
Infants who reside in rural areas, in poor families, with mothers with no formal education and female infants are more likely to be breastfed. Women without formal education are more likely to be anemic and their children to be stunted and wasted.
© Inter Press Service (2022) – All rights reservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
from San Jose News Bulletin https://sjnewsbulletin.com/a-world-with-a-billion-blank-canvases-global-issues/
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