MALNUTRITION: FAO statistics

The bad news is that 1.02 billion people are going hungry in today's world of plentiful supplies. The even worse news is that this figure only tells part of the global food insecurity story.This is not just because no cold statistic will ever depict this scourge's full human toll on those unable to find enough to eat for themselves and their families. It is also due to the simple fact that the number of people living in a state of food insecurity is actually much higher than this already scandalous tally. How much higher, nobody knows. Each October the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) produces the headline hunger statistics used by international leaders, policy- makers, non-governmental organisations and the media when debating the issue. Given the complexity and resources entailed, it has no rivals for the job. It takes a conservative approach, presumably to avoid being accused of overstating the problem. The U.N. agency looks at individual states' food production and trade data to see how much food is available and then uses household consumption patterns to calculate access to it and what proportion of any given population are 'undernourished' because they do not have enough to eat to meet their minimum energy needs. The first major problem is that the estimates for the food needed for minimum energy needs are based on the requirements for a 'sedentary lifestyle'. This suggests that many people are not counted as undernourished even though they are not getting enough calories to sustain a healthy, active working lifestyle. "FAO's estimates are conservative in the sense that if we used higher energy requirements, more people would be counted as undernourished," David Dawe, a senior economist at the FAO told IPS. Perhaps an even bigger issue is that, even if one accepts that the FAO's figure tells us how many people are 'undernourished', it still does not say how many poor people are 'malnourished' because they cannot afford an adequate diet. The saying 'man cannot live by bread alone' is literally, as well as figuratively, true. A person might be able to meet their energy needs by filling up on staples such as rice or potatoes, but if they cannot afford to have any variety in their diet, they will not get key micronutrients such as iron, iodine, vitamin A and zinc, with dramatic effects for their health and ability to function. The reference here is specifically to poverty-induced malnutrition. People in developing countries who eat so many calories that they are obese are also considered malnourished, as are people with illnesses that stop their bodies obtaining adequate nutrition from food, even if their food intake is satisfactory -- but these groups are not part of this analysis. Figures released by UNICEF last year suggest that poverty-induced malnutrition, which is sometimes called 'hidden hunger' and can have irremediable consequences, especially for under-twos and the unborn children of pregnant sufferers, is an enormous problem. The U.N. children's agency says 129 million under-fives in developing countries are underweight and therefore undernourished. But the number of under-fives who are stunted because of inadequate diets, and therefore malnourished, is over 50 percent higher at 195 million. The estimated numbers of people who are iron or iodine deficient are actually much larger than the number of 'undernourished' in the sense of dietary energy deficiency.

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