The Next Chapter

15Oct 2012

7 Hunger Facts For World Food Day 2012 (#wfd2012)

Tuesday October 16, 2012 is World Food Day. It’s an initiative started by the Food and Agriculture Organization, a division of the United Nations.

In honor of World Food Day, I’ve searched the web to share with you 7 facts about world hunger.

World Hunger Facts:

1: Almost 1 billion people go to bed hungry every night. That’s almost 1/7 people on Earth. (IFRC)

2: Last year, 50.1 million US citizens lived in food insecure households, with over 16 million of them children. (Feeding America)

3: Hunger kills more people every year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. (WFP)

4: Every 5 seconds, a child dies of a hunger-related disease. (The Hunger Project)

5: The average American wastes 209 to 254 pounds of edible food each year. (Face the Facts USA)

6: Nearly two thirds of the world’s hungry people live in Asia and the Pacific. (WFP)

7: There is enough food in the world to feed everyone; the problem is distribution. (World Health Organization)

If you want to donate, there are a lot of organizations you can choose, including the FAO and the World Food Programme (my personal choice).

  • Daniel McBane

    It’s not just people in the west that waste food, poorer countries are sometimes the worst offenders. The amount of food thrown away by the better off people in countries like China and India is appalling. And it’s done as a show of wealth more than anything else.

  • EarthDrifter

    Nice wake-up call post! As a traveler, I try to never waste food. When I don’t finish something because I’m full or don’t like it, I always ask for a to go bag. Then I focus on hanging on to this doggie bag until I’m able to pawn it off on someone who needs it. A person who can use the food is often very easy to find. This isn’t much but if everyone made an effort to give their leftovers it would make a small difference. The human race needs all the help it can get.