Childhood hunger is an issue that many people are familiar with, but how many actually know what they are actually talking about? I’m going to be talking about many questions that are asked about what is really happening in the parts of the world we can’t see. First, a commonly asked question is is child hunger going down? We reply sadly but hunger has been slowly but steadily on the rise for the past decade, gains and hunger reduction have been reversed (are now going up) as a result of high food prices and global economic downturn. The graph from atkearney.com, above is showing that food prices have been slowly rising for all the necessary food groups that everyone needs and are still rising, which is causing the starvation and worldwide hunger all around the world.
How many people globally do not have enough to eat? An estimated 795 million people do not have enough to eat. The number undernourished people in the world increased by 75 million in 2007 and 40 million in 2008 largely due to higher food prices. Higher food prices seem to be a huge cause in childhood hunger all around the world and that ‘s why we want to stop it from the source and start making farms and gardens so these families won’t have to worry about the money and not being able to eat that night or feed their children. While 795 million people around the world are starving this is showing that one in 9 kids goes to sleep hunger every single night, something that I’m guessing all of you have never done. Lastly this is a photo (from borgenproject.org/ a website also trying to help with world hunger captures a photo of what a little kid looks like when they receive food. This child goes to bed and wakes up every day not knowing if they are going to get a meal let alone anything to eat at all. But knowing about this issue and not doing anything about the millions of people starving needs to change and we need to come together and make a change.
Are micronutrients important? micronutrient deficiencies are very important afflicting nearly 2 billion people worldwide. Deficiencies of iron, vitamin A and zinc rank among the top ten leading causes of death through disease in developing countries. Getting micro nutrients is not as hard as it seems and only requires eating a little amount f vitamins and minerals and if we can’t get some vitamins and minerals around the world to children who are dying every 5 seconds because we aren’t doing anything to stop it, then we need to do something about the fact that we would never let our children go to bed hungry, and yet millions of kids are going to bed hunger everyday until they die and we don’t think twice about it. Above shows all the food that are in micro nutrients (from .bodyandsoul.com, a website teaching about necessary foods and micronutrients to live healthy). Seeing how many simple foods have something we need so bad can help motivate us to start giving to these kids, start volunteering to build farms and gardens so we can provide as many foods with micro nutrients, that are so critical for a healthy living body that we have to do something about it.
We help others, and we would love for you to join our team. Help us fight childhood hunger today! Visit our website and Instagram (@childhoodhungerorg) for more information.
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