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Food
Explanation
Food
is a basic necessity. Those who are fortunate try to eat three
square meals a day; however, over 840 million people around the
world go hungry every day. And more than half a billion people
are undernourished. They do not get enough vitamins and minerals
from the food that they eat to stay healthy. Hunger also kills.
Every day 34,000 children under age five die from hunger and related
causes. Why are so many people going hungry?
 One
of the main causes of hunger is poverty. Most of the people who
are hungry do not have enough money to purchase the food they
need. The poorest and most food-insecure people live in Africa,
while the largest number of continually undernourished people
live in the Asia-Pacific region. However, hunger remains especially
severe in South Asia, where growing poverty, debt, economic decline,
poor terms of trade, fast population growth, unfavorable weather,
war, and government collapse have all contributed to the continent’s
food problems. In the United States, the share of the population
facing hunger has risen, but hunger in wealthy nations is neither
as severe nor as widespread as in developing countries.
Hunger
is also an environmental problem with fresh water, land, forests,
and fisheries continually being used at or beyond capacity. In
the competition for resources, poor and hungry people, lacking
economic and political clout, have become even more marginalized.
This is true especially in countries where land holdings are not
even or fair, and poor families are forced to move onto fragile land
and to overcrowded cities.
War
is also a cause for hunger. War slows or stops food production
and marketing. Food supplies are often taken and used as instruments
of war, crop cycles are interrupted, seeds and breeding livestock
are consumed in desperation, and children suffer lasting damage
as a result of insufficient food. Even if fighting never occurs,
heavy military spending depletes resources away from food production,
education, and health care.
What are some of the causes of hunger?
How does war affect the availability of food?
What are some of the areas around the world where people experience
hunger?
How many meals do you eat each day?
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