World hunger haunts the UN festivities

As the leaders of the world posture and sermonize for the United Nations General Assembly this week, a growing global specter should spur common concern among them: World hunger, after a decade-long decline, spiked last year, because of scourges like global warming and civil conflicts that show little sign of abating.

The number of undernourished human beings on the planet increased from 777 million in 2015 to 815 million in 2016, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimated, in a report timed for the world leaders’ annual review of their hopes and fears for the planet. That means 11 percent of the world’s population went hungry every day — a 5 percent increase in two years and a severe setback for the United Nations’ goal of eliminating global hunger by 2030.

The human suffering underlying the data includes almost one in four children under 5 years of age — 155 million — with stunted growth and a greatly heightened risk of cognitive damage and susceptibility to infection. Another 52 million children are considered “wasting” — weighing too little for their height, for lack of food.

The report didn’t specify precise fac- tors that drove the decade of success in diminishing world hunger. But it stressed rising civil strife and climate disruption in explaining the sudden downturn.

“There is more than enough food produced in the world to feed everyone, yet 815 million people go hungry,” the United Nations food agency summarized plaintively.

At the same time, obesity continues to rise for adults all over the world, with a significant increase lately among children in most regions. “Multiple forms of malnutrition therefore coexist, with countries experiencing simultaneously high rates of child undernutrition and adult obesity,” the report warned.

A recent investigation by The Times delved into this paradox, finding food corporations exploiting the poor in Brazil with products richer in sugar than in balanced nutrients, thereby feeding obesity and its attendant lifethreatening diseases.

A stark measure of the complicated problems is that a vast majority of those going hungry — 489 million of the 815 million “food insecure” and malnourished — are fighting for

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