“In 2009, it was estimated that more than 1.02 billion people do not have enough to eat - more than the populations of USA, Canada and the European Union combined. That means one in nearly six people do not get enough food to be healthy and lead an active life”. ( World Food Programme, 2010). World hunger is one of the biggest problems that our world faces. Each year, almost 11 million children die before reaching the age of five; malnutrition is associated with 53 percent of these deaths (source: Caulfield et al., The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2004 July). Today one in seven people are hungry; don’t get the right amount of food necessary for a healthy living and that is why today malnutrition is the first ranked risk to health worldwide. It even tops AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined (USAID, 2009).
To begin with we will explain the different types of malnutrition and the different people that are affected. Then we will show the reasons of this crisis’s existence and finally we will portray the possible solutions to solve this worldwide problem.
There exists different types and terms that can define world hunger: under-nourishment, malnutrition and wasting. These three terms are different manifestations of hunger. Under nourishment relates mostly to food intake and the amount of calories that one takes to fulfill the physiological needs and to live a healthy life. Usually an undernourished person doesn’t get the proper calories causing him to loose energy and thus affecting his health. Malnutrition leans more towards the physical being (the age, the height, the weight) it usually tends to lead to infections and diseases like measles or diarrhea making the person weak and so leading to deaths. Finally there is the concept of wasting; it results from starvation and diseases. Wasting is the term relating to weight lost due to malnutrition. 925 million people do not have enough to eat; more than the