Hunger Hot Spots

September 20 07 During the 30 minutes it will take you to read this article, 360 preschool children will die of hunger and malnutrition. Twelve a minute, around the clock; more than six million a year. But that is only the tip of the proverbial and ugly iceberg. One in four preschoolers in developing countries suffers from hunger and nutritional deficiencies. These children do not grow to their full potential, they have little resistance to disease, they learn less in school and they earn less as adults. Because of low birth weight, they are handicapped from the moment they enter the world. More than 800 million people—two and a half times the population of the U.S.—live every day with hunger, or “food insecurity,” as it is often called, as their constant companion. Many more have micronutrient deficiencies: they do not get essential vitamins or minerals in their diets. Insufficient iron, and the anemia that comes with it, is the most widespread of these maladies. The problem does not stem, as some might think, from insufficient production. The world is awash in food, and more and more people are overeating. The so-called nutrition transition, in which diets change from basic grains and tubers to meat, dairy products and processed foods high in sugar and fat, is in full force in developing countries, bringing with it a dual nutritional problem of deficiencies and hunger in some households and obesity and related diseases in others. Technological advances in agriculture mean more food is grown at lower cost than ever before. Globalization, improved communication and efficient transport have facilitated the movement of food over long distances at reasonable rates. In fact, enough food is now being produced to meet the energy and protein needs of every person on the planet. Knowledge about nutrition is widely available, and the large humanitarian and economic costs of hunger and malnutrition are well documented—as are the benefits of eliminating these afflictions. The main reason hunger and nutritional deficiencies persist is poverty; many millions of By Per Pinstrup-Andersen and Fuzhi Cheng