by Marion Nestle

Currently browsing posts about: World hunger

Jul 12 2022

The UN releases dismal report on world hunger

FAO and other UN agencies. released the 2022 edition of The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI).

Here’s the video that comes with it: A Tale of Empty Plates.

The report does not mince words:

  • This year’s report should dispel any lingering doubts that the world is moving backwards in its efforts to end hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms.
  • The distance to reach many of the SDG 2 [Sustainable Development Goal #2, Zero Hunger] targets is growing wider each year.
  • The intensification of the major drivers behind recent food insecurity and malnutrition trends (i.e. conflict, climate extremes and economic shocks) combined with the high cost of nutritious foods and growing inequalities will continue to challenge food security and nutrition.

As the press release puts it, “The numbers paint a grim picture:”

  • As many as 828 million people were affected by hunger in 2021 – 46 million people more from a year earlier and 150 million more from 2019.
  • …the proportion of people affected by hunger jumped in 2020 and continued to rise in 2021, to 9.8 percent of the world population. This compares with 8 percent in 2019 and 9.3 percent in 2020.
  • Around 2.3 billion people in the world (29.3 percent) were moderately or severely food insecure in 2021 – 350 million more compared to before the outbreak of the COVID‑19 pandemic.
  • The gender gap in food insecurity continued to rise in 2021 – 31.9 percent of women in the world were moderately or severely food insecure, compared to 27.6 percent of men.
  • Almost 3.1 billion people could not afford a healthy diet in 2020, up 112 million from 2019.
  • An estimated 45 million children under the age of five were suffering from wasting….149 million children under the age of five had stunted growth and development due to a chronic lack of essential nutrients in their diets, while 39 million were overweight.

The one bright note:

  • Progress is being made on exclusive breastfeeding, with nearly 44 percent of infants under six months of age being exclusively breastfed worldwide in 2020. This is still short of the 50 percent target by 2030. Of great concern, two in three children are not fed the minimum diverse diet they need to grow and develop to their full potential.

But overall

  • nearly 670 million people (8 percent of the world population) will still be facing hunger in 2030.
  • This is a similar number to 2015, when the goal of ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition by the end of this decade was launched under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
  • In otherwords, there has been no progress since 2015.

If we want to fix this, we will have to:

  • End the pandemic
  • End wars
  • End climate change
  • End income and social inequalities

There’s our agenda.  That’s all.  Get busy.

Oct 13 2020

Good news #2: the Nobel Peace Prize

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize has been  awarded to the World Food Programme (WFP), “for its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict.”

The WFP is the United Nations agency that distributes international food aid.

Why do I think this is good news?  This prize recognizes:

  • The importance of food in maintaining a peaceful world.
  • The importance of functioning food systems during the coronavirus pandemic.
  • The value of United Nations agencies in maintaining peace and food security.

Why do I even ask this question? 

I am well aware of the inadequacies of food charity as a means to ensure nutrition, health and world peace.  All too often, international food aid:

  • Does not reach the people who most need it
  • Is siphoned off to benefit corrupt intermediaries
  • Undermines local food economies
  • Benefits donors more than recipients
  • Is used more as a political than a humanitarian tool
  • Causes more harm than good

I want to see anti-hunger policies institutionalized, not left as voluntary.

Food matters to world peace more than most people recognize.  If the prize raises recognition of the importance of food in society, it will have done good work.

Thanks to Jerry Hagstrom’s Hagstrom Report for most of these links

Jun 6 2019

Food industry: efforts to fight hunger?

I keep saying that food companies are not social service or public health agencies and should not be viewed as such.  They are businesses, and everything they do must aim to promote sales and returns to investors.

BakeryandSnacks.com, an industry newsletter to which I subscribe, has collected several of its articles on the anti-hunger activities of its member companies.  Is this public health or public relations?  Read and decide.

Jan 16 2019

Bad news on world hunger and obesity: they are getting worse

United Nations agencies have just released their annual report on world food insecurity.

Its main unhappy conclusion:

Food insecurity has increased since 2014:

So has worldwide obesity:

What is to be done?

Alas, that’s not what this report is about.

Jun 29 2018

Rebooting food: technological solutions to world hunger

Lots of people are worried about how we are going to feed people in the future and are thinking about possible solutions to problems of world hunger.  Hence: Rebooting Food from the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

You can guess from the title that the report is about technological solutions.  It begins:

Banana trees that fit in a test tube. Burgers made without a cow in sight. Fish farmed in the desert. Robots picking fruit. Welcome to the brave new world of food, where scientists are battling a global time-bomb of climate change, water scarcity, population growth and soaring obesity rates to find new ways to feed the future.

I wish the report had said more about the social and political causes of world hunger, and the need for social and political action to reduce income and other inequalities.

But if you want a quick overview of current thinking on food technology, this report is a good introduction.

Dec 8 2017

Weekend reading: Global Nutrition Report—“The nutrition situation is grave”

The annual Global Nutrition Report on progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has just arrived.

It does not provide much good news.

The report views the SDGs as an opportunity to make commitments to improve this situation.

I wish I were more optimistic.

Oct 6 2017

Weekend reading: Nutrition and Food Systems

HLPE [High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition]. Nutrition and food systems. A report by the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition of the Committee on World Food Security, Rome, 2017.

This report takes a food systems approach to recommendations for reducing the double burden of malnutrition—obesity in the presence of widespread hunger and its consequences.

This report aims to analyse how food systems influence diets and nutrition. It offers three significant additions to previous frameworks. First, it emphasizes the role of diets as a core link between food systems and their health and nutrition outcomes. Second, it highlights the central role of the food environment in facilitating healthy and sustainable consumer food choices. Third, it takes into account the impacts of agriculture and food systems on sustainability in its three dimensions (economic, social and environmental). 2. A food system gathers all the elements (environment, people, inputs, processes, infrastructures, institutions, etc.) and activities that relate to the production, processing, distribution, preparation and consumption of food, and the outputs of these activities, including socio-economic and environmental outcomes. This report pays specific attention to nutrition and health outcomes of food systems. It identifies three constituent elements of food systems, as entry and exit points for nutrition: food supply chains; food environments; and consumer behaviour.

Nov 12 2014

The New York Times does Food for Tomorrow

I attended the first day of the New York Times’ Food for Tomorrow conference at Stone Barns, worth the trip to hear Mark Bittman’s inspiring keynote.  My summary: feeding the growing world’s population is not about increasing food production; it’s about ending poverty.

Fortunately, the Times is making videos of the sessions available online.

But never mind all that.  Check out Bittman’s  speech.