Hunger affects every aspect of human development.
Without good nutrition:

• A child’s growth will be stunted.
• His intellectual and motor skills will be impaired.
• His little body will become more vulnerable
  to disease.
• Most likely, he won’t have the energy needed
  for school.
• If he survives to adulthood, his economic prospects will be bleak.

Hunger is anything but yesterday’s problem:

• More people are going hungry than ever before — approximately 1 billion worldwide.
• The recent global food crisis and economic downturn
  have added more than 115 million people to the ranks of the hungry over the last couple of years.

More than 1 billion people experience hunger on a daily basis.
Hungry children and their families can be found in every corner of the world.
They include:

• Subsistence farmers who can’t grow enough to feed their families
• City dwellers who don’t earn enough to buy the food they need

The number of children affected by hunger is growing, too:

• In the last two years, more than 115 million children, women, and men have joined the ranks of the hungry.
• Worldwide, 1 in 4 children don’t get the nutrition they need.

Sources: World Food Program, Food and Agriculture Organization

The poor spend up to 75 percent of their income on food.
For us, rising food prices are a source of frustration. They may force us to eat out less often or rearrange other spending priorities. For impoverished children, however, even a modest increase in food prices can have devastating consequences.

• In 2008, food prices soared by 57 percent, starting a new crisis.
• Several countries experienced riots because millions could no longer afford to buy basics like bread and rice.

The food crisis has affected children in different ways:

• Faced with higher food prices, many children have been forced to eat cheaper and less nutritious food.
• Others have to cut back from two meals a day to just one.
• In the worst cases, children may go without food for days at a time.

Sources: Food and Agriculture Organization

A child dies from hunger-related causes every 7 seconds.
Hunger is one of the leading child killers in our world, contributing to more than half of all child deaths:

• Every year, nearly 5 million hungry children die.
• Even if a child is just moderately low weight, she or he is four times more likely to die from an infectious disease compared to a well-nourished child.
• Worldwide, approximately 145 million children are low weight and at risk of dying — simply because they don’t get enough nutritious food.

Sources: UNICEF, United Nations Development Program

Hunger perpetuates the vicious cycle of poverty.
Hunger and poor eating rob children of their future:

• A hungry child is less likely to stay in school. Yet education is crucial to long-term food security. A farmer with four years of elementary education is almost 9 percent more productive than a farmer with no education.
• Hungry families are unable to invest in their own future. Hunger costs the world an estimated $20-30 billion per year in economic development.

Sources: Food and Agriculture Organization, World Food Program