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Hunger

state in which a person, for a sustained period, is unable to eat sufficient food to meet basic nutritional needs

In politics, humanitarian aid, and social science, Hunger is a condition in which a person, for a sustained period, is unable to eat sufficient food to meet basic nutritional needs.

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Quotes

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Because of so many wars, climate change, the widespread use of hunger as a political and military weapon, and a global health pandemic that makes all of that exponentially worse, 270 million people are marching toward starvation. Failure to address their needs will cause a hunger pandemic which will dwarf the impact of COVID. And if that’s not bad enough, out of that 270 million, 30 million depend on us 100% for their survival. How will humanity respond? ~ David Beasley
 
For Schwartz, the hunger for food is just one of the body’s appetites; for my female students, it is “the” most insistent craving and the preeminent source of their anger and frustration with the body, indeed, of their “terror” of it. ~ Susan Bordo
 
To one who asked what was the proper time for lunch, he said, "If a rich man, when you will; if a poor man, when you can." ~ Diogenes of Sinope quoted by Diogenes Laërtius
 
When scolded for masturbating in public, he said "I wish it were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing my belly." ~ Diogenes of Sinope quoted by Diogenes Laërtius
 
It's simply a national acknowledgement that in any kind of priority, the needs of human beings must come first. Poverty is here and now. Hunger is here and now. Racial tension is here and now. Pollution is here and now. These are the things that scream for a response. And if we don't listen to that scream - and if we don't respond to it - we may well wind up sitting amidst our own rubble, looking for the truck that hit us - or the bomb that pulverized us. Get the license number of whatever it was that destroyed the dream. And I think we will find that the vehicle was registered in our own name. ~ Rod Serling
 
Approximately 3.1 million children die from hunger each year. ~ World Hunger Education Service
 
18,000 children die from hunger every day. ~ United Nations
  • The slippers of the mortal Earth, Now touched the chest of the Moon. Oh, It is shameful that the misery of hunger is still continuing as it was in the past.
  • What makes bitter things sweet? Hunger.
    • Alcuin in R Lacey and D Danziger, The Year 1000, Little, Brown and Co,GB, 1999, p. 57
  • If all the protein of just the cottonseed, peanuts and soybean now grown were made available as a concentrate for human consumption, this would have the effect of doubling the quantity of protein concentrates now available. This alone would wipe out the world protein concentrate deficit that now exists.
    • Aaron Atschul, as quoted by John F. Henahan, Men and Molecules (1966)
  • Beauty is pain and there's beauty in everything, what's a little bit of hunger? I can go a little while longer.
  • Do you wish to honor the Body of the Savior? Do not despise it when it is naked. Do not honor it in church with silk vestments while outside it is naked and numb with cold. He who said, “This is my body,” and made it so by his word, is the same that said, “You saw me hungry and you gave me no food. As you did it not to the least of these, you did it not to me.” Honor him then by sharing your property with the poor. For what God needs is not golden chalices but golden souls.
  • Humanitarian and economic conditions are rapidly deteriorating in Afghanistan, where the U.N. estimates that more than half of the population suffers from acute hunger. The country has fallen into an economic crisis after the U.S. and other Western countries cut off direct financial assistance to the government following the Taliban takeover in August. Taliban leaders are also unable to access billions of dollars in Afghan national reserves that are held in banks overseas. “Forty million civilians were left behind when the NATO countries went for the door in August,” says Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, who recently visited Afghanistan and with refugees in Iran, where as many as 5,000 Afghans are fleeing every day. “They told me very clearly, 'We believe we will starve and freeze to death this harsh winter unless there is an enormous aid operation coming through.'”
    • Democracy Now!, Hell on Earth”: Millions of Afghans Face Starvation as U.S. & West Freeze Billions in Gov’t Funds, (16 November 2021)
  • Samples of a people that had undergone a terrible grinding and regrinding in the mill, and certainly not in the fabulous mill which ground old people young, shivered at every corner, passed in and out at every doorway, looked from every window, fluttered in every vestige of a garment that the wind shook. The mill which had worked them down, was the mill that grinds young people old; the children had ancient faces and grave voices; and upon them, and upon the grown faces, and ploughed into every furrow of age and coming up afresh, was the sigh, Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere. Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched clothing that hung upon poles and lines; Hunger was patched into them with straw and rag and wood and paper; Hunger was repeated in every fragment of the small modicum of firewood that the man sawed off; Hunger stared down from the smokeless chimneys, and stared up from the filthy street that had no offal, among its refuse, of anything to eat. Hunger was the inscription on the baker’s shelves, written in every small loaf of his scanty stock of bad bread; at the sausage-shop, in every dead-dog preparation that was offered for sale. Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts in the turned cylinder; Hunger was shred into atomics in every farthing porringer of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil.
  • To one who asked what was the proper time for lunch, he said, "If a rich man, when you will; if a poor man, when you can."
    • Diogenes of Sinope quoted by Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 40
    • Variant: If only it were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing the belly as it is to masturbate.
      • As quoted in Encarta Book of Quotations (2000) edited by Bill Swainson, p. 274
  • Money should not go to the military political group called the Taliban that took power by force. The money should go to the people, and it is possible. So, number one, there has to be trust funds, as we call it, that is held by U.N. agencies, that funnel money directly to the hospitals, that you just showed, where people are dying at the moment. It can go straight to the teachers that were on the payroll of the World Bank previously, can go straight to them. So, the money can go through us, international organizations, straight to the people.
    Secondly, unfreeze those funds that will enable banks to function again. At the moment, we cannot even buy relief items in Afghanistan. We have to ship them over, take them over from Pakistan and Iran, which means that employment is dying in Afghanistan.
    And thirdly, donors, come down from the fence. See that we are there. We are reliable channels for funding. The money will go to the people. Transmit funding, not just come with pledges. This will not become Switzerland in a long time. You have to share the risk with us to save lives this winter.
  • FAO’s imperative is to make sure no one suffers from hunger. Yet, while many people may not be “hungry” in the sense that they are suffering physical discomfort caused by a severe lack of dietary energy, they may still be food insecure. They might have access to food to meet their energy requirements, yet are uncertain that it will last, or they may be forced to reduce the quality and/or quantity of the food they eat in order to get by. This moderate level of food insecurity can contribute to various forms of malnutrition and can have serious consequences for health and well-being.
  • Much has changed since 1974, when FAO first began reporting on the extent of hunger in the world. The world population is growing steadily and is increasingly urbanized. Technology is evolving incessantly and the economy is more and more globalized. At the same time, there are worrying global trends in malnutrition, including a rapid rise in overweight and obesity, even as forms of undernutrition persist. The way food is produced, distributed and consumed worldwide has also changed dramatically. This vastly different world calls for new ways of thinking about hunger and food insecurity.
  • We, the Heads of State and Government, or our representatives, gathered at the World Food Summit at the invitation of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, reaffirm the right of everyone to have access to safe and nutritious food, consistent with the right to adequate food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger.
    We pledge our political will and our common and national commitment to achieving food security for all and to an ongoing effort to eradicate hunger in all countries, with an immediate view to reducing the number of undernourished people to half their present level no later than 2015.
    We consider it intolerable that more than 800 million people throughout the world, and particularly in developing countries, do not have enough food to meet their basic nutritional needs. This situation is unacceptable. Food supplies have increased substantially, but constraints on access to food and continuing inadequacy of household and national incomes to purchase food, instability of supply and demand, as well as natural and man-made disasters, prevent basic food needs from being fulfilled. The problems of hunger and food insecurity have global dimensions and are likely to persist, and even increase dramatically in some regions, unless urgent, determined and concerted action is taken, given the anticipated increase in the world's population and the stress on natural resources.
  • National and international relief operations are often the only solution for hungry people facing immediate starvation, and should continue to be a priority and be provided in an impartial and apolitical manner, with due respect to national sovereignty and in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the guiding principles of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 46/182. However, emergency food assistance cannot be a basis for sustainable food security. Conflict prevention and resolution, and stepped up rehabilitation and development promotion activities, which prevent recurrence of and reduce vulnerability to food emergencies, are essential elements of food security. Emergency preparedness is a central element for minimizing the negative effects of food emergencies and famines.
  • Because of population growth, the very small decrease in the number of hungry people has nevertheless resulted in a reduction in the proportion of undernourished people in the developing countries by 3 percentage points – from 20 percent in 1990–92 to 17 percent in 2001–03. (…) the prevalence of undernourishment declined by 9 percent (from 37 percent to 28 percent) between 1969–71 and 1979–81 and by a further 8 percentage points (to 20 percent) between 1979–81 and 1990–92.
    • Food and Agriculture Organization Agricultural and Development Economics Division. "The State of Food Insecurity in the World, 2006 : Eradicating world hunger – taking stock ten years after the World Food Summit". Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2006, p.8.
  • FAO’s most recent estimates put the number of hungry people at 923 million in 2007, an increase of more than 80 million since the 1990–92 base period.
    • Food and Agriculture Organization Economic and Social Development Department. "The State of Food Insecurity in the World, 2008 : High food prices and food security - threats and opportunities". Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2008, p.2.
  • Good progress in reducing the share of hungry people in the developing world had been achieved – down from almost 20 percent in 1990–92 to less than 18 percent in 1995–97 and just above 16 percent in 2003–05. The estimates show that rising food prices have thrown that progress into reverse, with the proportion of undernourished people worldwide moving back towards 17 percent.
    • Food and Agriculture Organization Economic and Social Development Department. "The State of Food Insecurity in the World, 2008 : High food prices and food security - threats and opportunities". Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2008, p.6.
  • The number of undernourished people in the world remains unacceptably high at near the one billion mark despite an expected decline in 2010 for the first time since 1995. This decline is largely attributable to increased economic growth foreseen in 2010 – particularly in developing countries – and the fall in international food prices since 2008. The recent increase in food prices, if it persists, will create additional obstacles in the fight to further reduce hunger.
    However, a total of 925 million people are still estimated to be undernourished in 2010, representing almost 16 percent of the population of developing countries. The fact that nearly a billion people remain hungry even after the recent food and financial crises have largely passed indicates a deeper structural problem that gravely threatens the ability to achieve internationally agreed goals on hunger reduction: the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG) and the 1996 World Food Summit goal. It is also evident that economic growth, while essential, will not be sufficient in itself to eliminate hunger within an acceptable period of time.
  • The analysis of hunger during crisis and recovery brings to the fore the vulnerability to economic shocks of many poor countries. Lack of appropriate mechanisms to deal with the shocks or to protect the most vulnerable populations from their effects result in large swings in hunger following crises. Moreover, it should not be assumed that all the effects of crises on hunger disappear when the crisis is over. Vulnerable households deal with shocks by selling assets, which are very difficult to rebuild, by reducing food consumption in terms of quantity and variety and by cutting down on health and education expenditures – coping mechanisms that all have long-term negative effects on quality of life and livelihoods.
  • The number of people in the world affected by hunger continued to increase in 2020 under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic. After remaining virtually unchanged from 2014 to 2019, the PoU increased from 8.4 percent to around 9.9 percent between 2019 and 2020, heightening the challenge of achieving the Zero Hunger target in 2030. The 2020 estimate ranges from 9.2 to 10.4 percent, depending on the assumptions made to reflect the uncertainties around the assessment.
    In terms of population, it is estimated that between 720 and 811 million people in the world faced hunger in 2020. Considering the middle of the projected range (768 million), 118 million more people were facing hunger in 2020 than in 2019, with estimates ranging from 70 to 161 million.
  • With less than a decade to 2030, the world is not on track to ending world hunger and malnutrition; and in the case of world hunger, we are moving in the wrong direction. This report has shown that economic downturns as a consequence of COVID-19 containment measures all over the world have contributed to one of the largest increases in world hunger in decades, which has affected almost all low- and middle-income countries, and can reverse gains made in nutrition. The COVID-19 pandemic is just the tip of the iceberg, more alarmingly, the pandemic has exposed the vulnerabilities forming in our food systems over recent years as a result of major drivers such as conflict, climate variability and extremes, and economic slowdowns and downturns. These major drivers are increasingly occurring simultaneously in countries, with interactions that seriously undermine food security and nutrition.
  • There is more than enough food in the world to feed our population of 7.8 billion. But, today, more than 820 million people are hungry & #COVID19 is making things worse. To eradicate hunger, we must ensure inclusive access to healthy and nutritious food.
  • 690 million people in the world are hungry – almost 9% of the entire population of the planet. Many more people could slip into hunger this year. We must make food systems more sustainable and healthy diets affordable & accessible for all.
  • Nutritionists suggest that a normal adult male should receive about seventy grams of protein a day, with larger amounts going to pregnant women, children and the sick. Of the total protein requirement, about thirty grams should be of animal origin. ...only one quarter of the world's people receive more than thirty grams of animal protein daily; many receive far less... the present total world deficit is about five million metric tons, one quarter of a year's total supply.
    • John F. Henahan, Men and Molecules (1966)
  • A child with kwashiorkor loses little weight, but... is very susceptible to cuts and bruises, poor bone development, enlarged liver, mental dysfunction and a premature death. In kwashiorkor areas, the peak death rate is sixty per thousand as compared to the mortality of four per thousand in other areas. ... the condition can be quickly corrected if the child's diet is supplemented with essential animal protein.
    • John F. Henahan, Men and Molecules (1966)
  • Peru, a country which is severely lacking in animal protein, has... a thriving fish meal industry which produces more than a million tons of nutritious fish meal annually. What frustrates the food experts is that almost the entire output of fish meal—derived from anchovies... is exported to North America, where it is used in poultry feed.
    • John F. Henahan, Men and Molecules (1966)
  • As valuable as animal protein is, livestock are relatively inefficient protein-making machines. ...only 23 percent of the protein that a cow takes in ends up as usable protein in its meat or milk. Beef cattle pay back about 10 percent... while pigs return 12 percent. ...Grazing in a pasture, a 1,000-pound cow turns the grass into edible protein at the rate of about a pound a day. The same weight of bacterial organisms... produces 2,750 pounds of protein in the same "grazing" day. Bacteria are also less demanding... they do not care what the weather is and do not need as much personal attention...
    • John F. Henahan, Men and Molecules (1966)
  • Relatively available, but relatively untapped, food sources, whose protein content can be favorably compared to animal protein, are the oil seeds, such as soybean, peanuts, and cottonseed. Potentially these seeds could contribute and additional twenty million tons of protein to the expanding population, but except for soybean, very little reaches human stomachs in critically underfed areas.
    • John F. Henahan, Men and Molecules (1966)
  • New cottonseed processes... can produce high protein concentrates containing little or none of the poisonous pigment gossypol. All of the processes use a variety of chemical solvents... to sidestep the need for protein-destroying heat which was used in earlier processes.
    • John F. Henahan, Men and Molecules (1966)
  • There are now about 100,000 different types of protein-producing plants that are almost completely ignored as food staples. These unused protein suppliers are the fungi, which include the yeasts, mushrooms and molds. ...there are many carbohydrate-containing plants that can be used as food for fungus... in low-protein areas of the world. ...even wood pulp has been a fair starting material for the protein-manufacturing machinery of the Fungi Imperfecti. Dr. [William D.] Gray has calculated that if only seven major crops were converted into fungal protein, the protein would meet the yearly needs of more than four and a half billion people.
    • John F. Henahan, Men and Molecules (1966)
  • In spite of the bacteria's bad reputation, oil chemists and nutritionists anticipate that someday they might be able to put these pests to work as valuable protein producers. The bacteria use petroleum hycrocarbons as a source of carbon...Dr. [Alfred] Champagnat... calculates that if petroleum were used as a protein source, it would make only a small dent in the oil reserves.
    • John F. Henahan, Men and Molecules (1966)
  • Hunger also changes the world - when eating can't be a habit, then neither can seeing.
  • During the election, Prime Minister Harper ended some of his speeches with the words “God bless Canada.” Indeed, the prophet Isaiah says that God blesses you when you “share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house” (Isaiah 58.7). We urge the Prime Minister to spend tax dollars now in a way that will bring the homeless poor into their own house, and allow them the dignity of sharing their bread with others.
  • When He broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, “Come.” I looked, and behold, a black horse; and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard something like a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; but do not damage the oil and the wine.”
  • Part of her wanted to be a swan. The other part wanted to eat one. She had broken her fast on some acorn paste and a handful of bugs. Bugs weren't so bad when you got used to them. Worms were worse, but not so bad as the pain in your belly from days without food.
  • It was a warm day and he had a long way to go. He hadn't gone more than half-way when a sort of funny feeling began to creep all over him. It began at the tip of his nose and trickled all through him and out at the soles of his feet. It was just as if somebody inside him were saying "Now then, Pooh, time for a little something".
 
Henry Ducard: Over the ages, our weapons have grown more sophisticated. With Gotham, we tried a new one - economics. But we underestimated certain of Gotham's citizens. Such as your parents. Gunned down by one of the very people they were trying to help. Create enough hunger, and everyone becomes a criminal. ~ Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer
  • But hunger is probably the strongest motive for eating what under normal circumstances would be considered inedible. Perhaps if the ominous prognostications of pundits terrified by untrammeled population growth came true, one can imagine a world in which each member of humanity crouches on his sternly alloted sand pile and presents his plastic card at. the state controlle commissary for his weekly ration of fish protein. At such a time, the placenta may well become a delicacy of haute cuisine. In that far-off dy mankin may find useful the valeditory used by the Toradja natives of the Celebes who hang the placenta in the fork of a large Ficus tree and on departing address it: "You afterbirth, do not say that I do not ove you; we love you. Do not tickle the soles of the feet of the feet of your little brother (sister) and do not pinch his (her) stomach.
    • W. B. Ober p.598
  • I have no doubt that every form of cannibalism, excepting at most those which happen in times of extreme hunger and whose only purpose is to secure survival, has a pathological, perverse background.
    • Friedemann Pfafflin. (2009) Reply to Beier (2009). Archives of Sexual Behavior, 38, pp. 166-167; as quoted in "Turn on the Eater", by Mark D. Griffiths, Psychology Today, (Nov 29, 2013).
  • We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well that was probably true. They were all on a diet.
  • Judas: Woman your fine ointment - brand new and expensive
    Should have been saved for the poor
    Why has it been wasted? We could have raised maybe
    Three hundred silver pieces or more
    People who are hungry, people who are starving
    They matter more than your feet and hair!
  • The Gods have not ordained hunger to be our death: even to the well-fed man comes death in varied shape,
    The riches of the liberal never waste away, while he who will not give finds none to comfort him,
    The man with food in store who, when the needy comes in miserable case begging for bread to eat,
    Hardens his heart against him, when of old finds not one to comfort him.

    Bounteous is he who gives unto the beggar who comes to him in want of food, and the feeble,
    Success attends him in the shout of battle. He makes a friend of him in future troubles,
    No friend is he who to his friend and comrade who comes imploring food, will offer nothing.
  • A report prepared by the Global Network Against Food Crises, an international alliance working to address the root causes of extreme hunger, which acts under the auspices of the World Food Program, shows that in 2021 global levels of hunger surpassed all previous records — with close to 193 million people acutely food insecure and in need of urgent assistance across 53 countries and territories. This represents an increase of nearly 40 million people compared with 2020. According to the report, the outlook for 2022 is for further deterioration of global hunger levels, exacerbated by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, which is having severe repercussions on global food, energy and fertilizer prices... the geopolitics of famine is such that millions of lives are held hostage to conflicts far from the nations most in need. Hopefully, the US, Russia and the UN will be able to reach an equitable balance before it is too late.
  • What we’ve been hearing from the panelists is how the global food system works right now... It’s based on large multinational companies, private profits, and very low international transfers to help poor people (sometimes no transfers at all). It’s based on the extreme irresponsibility of powerful countries with regard to the environment. And it’s based on a radical denial of the economic rights of poor people... We’ve just heard from the Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Many point a finger of blame at the DRC and other poor countries for their poverty. Yet we don’t seem to remember, or want to remember, that starting around 1870, King Leopold of Belgium created a slave colony in the Congo that lasted for around 40 years; and then the government of Belgium ran the colony for another 50 years. In 1961, after independence of the DRC, the CIA then assassinated the DRC’s first popular leader, Patrice Lumumba, and installed a US-backed dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, for roughly the next 30 years. And in recent years, Glencore and other multinational companies suck out the DRC’s cobalt without paying a level of royalties and taxes. We simply don’t reflect on the real history of the DRC and other poor countries struggling to escape from poverty. Instead, we point fingers at these countries and say, “What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you govern yourselves properly?”
  • How is it that in the 21st century, when the planet as a whole is producing almost half, again, as much in terms of calories that we need to feed everyone, that there are some people that are in such dire circumstances as he described? So, we must always do that work. We must support that work. We must congratulate the people that devote their lives to do that. But I think a more important calling is actually to prevent the incidence of hunger on the planet, which is entirely doable.
  • The formula that food is the way to derive peace actually should be more properly understood in reverse. The answer to my question of why we have so many hungry people on the planet when there is no need for that is that it is a deliberate decision that some human beings make in order to appropriate the resources of others, or, as in the case of one of the hot spots on the planet right now for hunger, which is Yemen, it was a deliberate strategy to disrupt the food system specifically to weaken the country in the pursuit of the war between proxies, Saudi Arabia and Iran. And so, it’s important to remember that hunger does not always happen because of natural disasters, which is a mental model that most of us fall back upon; it is often the result of things that we actually do to each other deliberately.
  • Those of us that enjoy cocoa, coffee, tea, the products of most of the tropical part of the world, are actually utilizing tropical land, are actually utilizing the resources of other people. In our mind, we believe in such theories as comparative advantage: We’re actually trading for these artifacts. But in fact what is happening is that most of the time we’re appropriating the resources of very vulnerable, economically desperate people that are not able to fight back against millionaires that are investing in land leases in order to produce industrial crops, such as jatropha for biofuels, or to produce the luxury crops of the Global North.
    ... these are deliberate human decisions, tactics that look like investment decisions to other people but in fact actually have the perverse result of immiserating and making other people hungry in different parts of the planet...
  • Hunger does not just happen to people... It isn’t just that there’s been a temporary catastrophe such as a typhoon, a hurricane. It is that we deliberately make decisions to deprive other folks of the factors of production that they require to take care of one of their prior needs, which is to provide for their nourishment. So it’s a matter of power... The abstract notion of hunger can be translated into very deliberate power plays, that we all can interact with, that we all can shift.
  • It's simply a national acknowledgement that in any kind of priority, the needs of human beings must come first. Poverty is here and now. Hunger is here and now. Racial tension is here and now. Pollution is here and now. These are the things that scream for a response. And if we don't listen to that scream - and if we don't respond to it - we may well wind up sitting amidst our own rubble, looking for the truck that hit us - or the bomb that pulverized us. Get the license number of whatever it was that destroyed the dream. And I think we will find that the vehicle was registered in our own name.
    • Rod Serling, Commencement Address at the University of Southern California; (March 17, 1970).
  • In the waning weeks of 1932, facing no external security threat and no challenge from within, with no conceivable justification except to prove the inevitability of his rule, Stalin chose to kill millions of people in Soviet Ukraine. He shifted to a position of pure malice, where the Ukrainian peasant was somehow the aggressor and he, Stalin, the victim. Hunger was a form of aggression, for Kaganovich in a class struggle, for Stalin in a Ukrainian national struggle, against which starvation was the only defense. Stalin seemed determined to display his dominance over the Ukrainian peasantry, and seemed even to enjoy the depths of suffering that such a posture would require. Amartya Sen has argued that starvation is “a function of entitlements and not of food availability as such.” It was not food shortages but food distribution that killed millions in Soviet Ukraine, and it was Stalin who decided who was entitled to what.56
  • WFP's Hunger Map depicts the prevalence of undernourishment in the population of each country in 2016-18. From Africa and Asia to Latin America and the Near East, there are 821 million people - more than 1 in 9 of the world population - who do not get enough to eat.
  • An estimated 820 million people did not have enough to eat in 2018, up from 811 million in the previous year, which is the third year of increase in a row. This underscores the immense challenge of achieving the Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger by 2030, says a new edition of the annual The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report released today.
    The pace of progress in halving the number of children who are stunted and in reducing the number of babies born with low birth weight is too slow, which also puts the SDG 2 nutrition targets further out of reach, according to the report.
    At the same time, adding to these challenges, overweight and obesity continue to increase in all regions, particularly among school-age children and adults.
    The chances of being food insecure are higher for women than men in every continent, with the largest gap in Latin America.
  • The situation is most alarming in Africa, as the region has the highest rates of hunger in the world and which are continuing to slowly but steadily rise in almost all subregions. In Eastern Africa in particular, close to a third of the population (30.8 percent) is undernourished. In addition to climate and conflict, economic slowdowns and downturns are driving the rise. Since 2011, almost half the countries where rising hunger occurred due to economic slowdowns or stagnation were in Africa.
    The largest number of undernourished people (more than 500 million) live in Asia, mostly in southern Asian countries. Together, Africa and Asia bear the greatest share of all forms of malnutrition, accounting for more than nine out of ten of all stunted children and over nine out of ten of all wasted children worldwide. In southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, one child in three is stunted.
    In addition to the challenges of stunting and wasting, Asia and Africa are also home to nearly three-quarters of all overweight children worldwide, largely driven by consumption of unhealthy diets.
  • More people are going hungry, an annual study by the United Nations has found. Tens of millions have joined the ranks of the chronically undernourished over the past five years, and countries around the world continue to struggle with multiple forms of malnutrition.
    The latest edition of the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, published today, estimates that almost 690 million people went hungry in 2019 – up by 10 million from 2018, and by nearly 60 million in five years. High costs and low affordability also mean billions cannot eat healthily or nutritiously. The hungry are most numerous in Asia but expanding fastest in Africa. Across the planet, the report forecasts, the COVID-19 pandemic could tip over 130 million more people into chronic hunger by the end of 2020. (Flare-ups of acute hunger in the pandemic context may see this number escalate further at times.)
  • Asia remains home to the greatest number of undernourished (381 million). Africa is second (250 million), followed by Latin America and the Caribbean (48 million). The global prevalence of undernourishment – or overall percentage of hungry people – has changed little at 8.9 percent, but the absolute numbers have been rising since 2014. This means that over the last five years, hunger has grown in step with the global population.
  • As progress in fighting hunger stalls, the COVID-19 pandemic is intensifying the vulnerabilities and inadequacies of global food systems – understood as all the activities and processes affecting the production, distribution and consumption of food. While it is too soon to assess the full impact of the lockdowns and other containment measures, the report estimates that at a minimum, another 83 million people, and possibly as many as 132 million, may go hungry in 2020 as a result of the economic recession triggered by COVID-19. The setback throws into further doubt the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 2 (Zero Hunger).

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 381-82.
  • Hunger is sharper than the sword.
  • Bone and Skin, two millers thin,
    Would starve us all, or near it;
    But be it known to Skin and Bone
    That Flesh and Blood can't bear it.
  • It is difficult to speak to the belly, because it has no ears.
    • Cato the Censor, when the Romans demanded corn. See Plutarch's Life of Cato the Censor.
  • La mejor salsa del mundo es la hambre.
  • Enough is as good as a feast.
    • George Chapman, Eastward Ho!, Act III, scene 2. Written by Chapman, Jonson, Marston.
  • Socratem audio dicentem, cibi condimentum esse famem, potionis sitim.
    • I hear Socrates saying that the best seasoning for food is hunger; for drink, thirst.
    • Cicero, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, II. 28.
  • Oliver Twist has asked for more.
  • A fishmonger's wife may feed of a conger; but a serving-man's wife may starve for hunger.
    • Health to the Gentlemanly Profession of Servingmen (1598).
  • They that die by famine die by inches.
  • Græculus esuriens in cœlum, jusseris, ibit.
    • Bid the hungry Greek go to heaven, he will go.
    • Juvenal, Satires (early 2nd century), III. 78.
  • You cannot create reforms with hungry people. Some 75% of the Iranian people's demands are economic... and only 5% cultural and political.
  • Magister artis ingeniique largitor venter.
    • The belly is the teacher of art and the bestower of genius.
    • Persius, Satires, Prologue. X.
  • Famem fuisse suspicor matrem mihi.
    • I suspect that hunger was my mother.
    • Plautus, Stichus, Act II. 1. 1.
  • Obliged by hunger and request of friends.
    • Alexander Pope, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, Prologue to the Satires, line 44.
  • La ventre affamé n'point d'oreilles.
  • Nec rationem patitur, nec æquitate mitigatur nec ulla prece flectitur, populus esuriens.
    • A hungry people listens not to reason, nor cares for justice, nor is bent by any prayers.
    • Seneca the Younger, De Brevitate Vitæ, XVIII.
  • They said they were an-hungry; sigh'd forth proverbs,
    That hunger broke stone walls, that dogs must eat,
    That meat was made for mouths, that the gods sent not
    Corn for the rich men only: with these shreds
    They vented their complainings.
  • Cruel as death, and hungry as the grave.
  • Malesuada fames.
    • Hunger that persuades to evil.
    • Virgil, Æneid (29-19 BC), VI. 276.

See also

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