HUNGRIER1
Since 2014, the number of people who are chronically undernourished – unable to fulfil their food needs long term – has been rising.
- 1 in 9 people suffer severe hunger worldwide.
- 19% of people in Africa go hungry in Africa, the highest rate in the world.
- Up to 1/3 of the world’s children under-5 were stunted (too short) or wasted (too thin) in 2019 (98% reside in low and middle-income countries).
HEAVIER
Obesity is rising in almost all countries and has tripled worldwide since 1975. It’s no longer solely a rich-world problem – 45% of obese under-5s live in Asia, and 25% in Africa.1,2
- 1 in 3 people are overweight or obese.3
- $50 million was spent by corporations lobbying against US government initiatives to reduce consumption of sugary drinks in 2016.4
POORLY FED
Every country in the world now suffers from malnutrition. Increasingly, high rates of under-nutrition, overnutrition/obesity and micro-nutrient deficiency co-exist in the same place (country, household or even the same person). This is known as the double, or even triple, burden of malnutrition.
- 57% of people in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa cannot afford safe, nutritious and sufficient food.1
- 3 Billion people are unable to afford a nutritious diet worldwide; healthy food is out reach for poor people in every region of the world.5
OVERABUNDANCE
Hunger has nothing to do with scarcity.
- 300% Food production has increased by 300% in the past 50 years; world population has grown by 120%.
- $18 billion was paid out to shareholders by the biggest food and drink companies between January and June 2020 ($10 billion more than the Food segment of UN’s Covid-19 humanitarian appeal).6
WASTED
An estimated 30% of the world’s food goes uneaten – more than enough to feed the world’s hungry.7
- $218 billion is spent in the US every year on growing, processing, transporting and disposing of food that is never eaten.8
- 20% of food shopping is thrown away by Australians every week – equivalent to 1 out of 5 bags.9
TIPPED INTO CRISIS
Covid-19 could leave 270 million people on the brink of starvation.5 That’s more than the population of Brazil and the UK combined.
- 12,000 deaths? By the end of 2020, 12,000 people in the Global South could die daily from hunger linked to Covid-19.6
- 47% In April, nearly half of households ran out of food in South Africa.10
- 3.7 million people in the UK used food banks in the first weeks of lockdown, a 90% increase year on year.6
- The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) 2020. FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO, nin.tl/SOFI2020
- Global Nutrition Report 2020, globalnutritionreport.org
- WHO news-room, nin.tl/WHOfact-sheet
- ‘The Global Syndemic of Obesity, Undernutrition, and Climate Change: The Lancet Commission report,’ July 2019, nin.tl/Syndemic
- WHO newsroom, nin.tl/SOFIpressrelease
- ‘The Hunger Virus’, Oxfam Media Briefing, 9 July 2020, nin.tl/HungerVirus
- Eduardo Botti Abbade, ‘Estimating the nutritional loss and the feeding potential …’ in World Development (Vol 134) October 2020, nin.tl/FoodWasteFeeding
- ReFed analysis, nin.tl/FinancialWaste
- foodwise.com.au
- ‘Consumer Co-operatives…’, Daily Maverick, July 2020, nin.tl/DailyMaverick
- SOFI 2020 (see 1a) FAO scenarios based on projections around economic data and food availability.
