11 Facts About World Hunger

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1. 11.3% of the world’s population is hungry. That’s roughly 805 million people who go undernourished on a daily basis, consuming less than the recommended 2,100 calories a day.^[Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN. "The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2014." FAO, 2014. Web Accessed May 1, 2015.]
2. The world produces enough food to feed all 7 billion people, but those who go hungry either do not have land to grow food or money to purchase it. Fight hunger in your community by collecting food outside a local supermarket. Sign up for Supermarket Stakeout.^[Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN. "The State of Food Insecurity in the World. Part 3: Feeding the World." FAO, 2012. Web Accessed May 1, 2015.]
3. 10 countries that have achieved greatest success in reducing the total number of hungry people in proportion to their national population are Armenia, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Cuba, Georgia, Ghana, Kuwait, Saint Vincent and Grenadines, Thailand and Venezuela.^[Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN. "The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2014." FAO, 2014. Web Accessed May 1, 2015.]
4. Poverty is the principal cause of hunger. The causes of poverty include poor people's lack of resources, an extremely unequal income distribution in the world and within specific countries, conflict, and hunger itself.^[World Bank. "Overview: Understanding, measuring, overcoming poverty." World Bank, 2010. Web Accessed May 1, 2015.]
5. In 2010, an estimated 7.6 million children — more than 20,000 a day — died. Poor nutrition plays a role in at least half of these deaths.^[UNICEF. "The State of the World's Children 2008: Women and Children - Child Survival." UNICEF, 2008. Web Accessed May 1, 2015.]
6. Nearly 98% of worldwide hunger exists in underdeveloped countries.^[Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN. "The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2014." FAO, 2014. Web Accessed May 1, 2015.]
7. Almost 1 in every 15 children in developing countries dies before the age of 5, most of them from hunger-related causes.^[UNICEF. "The State of the World's Children 2008: Women and Children - Child Survival." UNICEF, 2008. Web Accessed May 1, 2015.]
8. While hunger exists worldwide, 526 million hungry people live in Asia.^[Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN. "The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2014." FAO, 2014. Web Accessed May 1, 2015.]
9. Over a quarter of the world's undernourished people live in Sub-Saharan Africa. Almost 1 in 4 people in this region is chronically hungry.^[Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN. "The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2014." FAO, 2014. Web Accessed May 1, 2015.]
10. When a mother is undernourished during pregnancy, the baby is often born undernourished, too. Every year, 17 million children are born this way due to a mother’s lack of nutrition before and during pregnancy.^[Black, Robert E, Lindsay H Allen, Zulfiqar A Bhutta, Laura E Caulfield, Mercedes de Onis, Majid Ezzati, Colin Mathers, Juan Rivera. "Maternal and child undernutrition: global and regional exposures and health consequences." The Lancet, 2008. Web Accessed May 1, 2015.]
11. Similarly, women in hunger are so deficient of basic nutrients (like iron) that 315,000 die during childbirth from hemorrhaging every year.^[Black, Robert E, Lindsay H Allen, Zulfiqar A Bhutta, Laura E Caulfield, Mercedes de Onis, Majid Ezzati, Colin Mathers, Juan Rivera. "Maternal and child undernutrition: global and regional exposures and health consequences." The Lancet, 2008. Web Accessed May 1, 2015.]