Last year, the United Nations projected a rise in world hunger to 1.02 billion people – more than one-seventh of the global population! Statistics on hunger are always rough estimates, and the results can vary greatly from one study to another. But one thing seems clear: the U.N. number is no exaggeration. In fact, it may be too conservative!
For starters, the U.N. study only tells us how many people are undernourished; not how many are malnourished. In other words, a person who is eating regularly and getting more than enough calories, but who is too poor to afford the variety of foods necessary to meet basic vitamin and nutrient requirements, would not have been counted as “hungry.”