UN warns more people going hungry as malnutrition persists worldwide
Max Civili
Press TV, Rome
The latest edition of the annual report “State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World,” released on Monday, has found that more people are going hungry worldwide.
Produced jointly by the five United Nations (UN) agencies that coordinate international efforts to defeat hunger, the report said almost 690 million people went hungry in 2019 — up by 10 million from 2018 and by nearly 60 million in five years.
The report also highlights that the COVID-19 pandemic is intensifying the vulnerabilities and inadequacies of global food systems. Although it is too soon to assess the full impact of the lockdowns and other containment measures, the report estimates that at a minimum, another 83 million people, and possibly as many as 132 million, may go hungry in 2020 as a result of the economic recession triggered by COVID-19.
The heads of the five UN agencies dealing with food, nutrition and health have warned that five years after committing to ending hunger, food insecurity, and all forms of malnutrition, the world is still off track to achieve this objective by 2030. They are urging a transformation of food systems to reduce the cost of nutritious foods and increase the affordability of healthy diets worldwide.
Even in developed countries and in a lot of urban areas, the poor cannot afford nutritious food. What is available to them in the market is food that is very processed, high in unsaturated fats and oils, and not nutritious.
The latest estimates indicate that a staggering three billion people or more around the world cannot afford a healthy diet. In sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia, this is the case for almost six out of ten people.
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