Hunger

Men eating in a soup kitchen in Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Hunger is the sensation that indicates the need to eat. It can also be a shortage of basic foods, which causes widespread famine and misery or appetite and desire for something. Hunger is the consequence of poverty and economic inequality.

Definitions

In 2014, famines affected some 50 million people. Structural malnutrition is chronic and affects some 2 billion people.

Famine

Famine is a generalized shortage of food that applies to humans or any type of fauna, and usually causes malnutrition, malnutrition, epidemics, and increased mortality in the affected regions.

Malnutrition

Malnutrition is a deficiency in the intake of calories and proteins, which especially if it is chronic, hinders health and can lead to problems in physical or intellectual development that can manifest themselves in different adult problems. And in very acute cases over time it can lead, more often indirectly than directly (due to weakness in the face of any disease) to death.

Malnutrition

Malnutrition is a general term that describes the condition caused by inappropriate nutrition or diet, which can occur in both under- and over-consumption of calories and minerals.

Physiology

Physiologically, hunger is produced by the great stimuli that certain substances exert on our brain. Thus, for example, hypoglycemia stimulates the lateral hypothalamus and produces vagal stimuli that force us to eat, while fatty acids, cholesterol and serotonin stimulate the ventromedial hypothalamus and produce the opposite sensation of hunger: satiety.

In this situation, the necessary processes for obtaining food are activated: activity of the dopaminergic system, it provides the central nervous system with clarity in thought and in the perception of the environment (similar to what stimulation by drugs can cause), increasing neuroactivity. When the food source is located, catecholamines (specifically adrenaline) come into operation, which will provide the body with reserve energy to be able to obtain the necessary energy source.

Facts about world hunger

States of the world with more than 20% of their population with malnutrition (2005).

Most starvation deaths are due to permanent malnutrition. Families simply do not have enough food (or perhaps they do not have the resources to buy it due to its scarcity). This, in turn, is due to extreme poverty.

According to the epidemiological bulletin of the Ministry of Health, in 2018, up to week 39 of the year, 4,011 cases of people sick due to chronic malnutrition have been treated, that is, a level at which life is at risk; This figure implies an average of 15 cases per day, an indicator that allows us to measure the magnitude of the problem in the country.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that in 2012 chronic hunger affected 1.04 billion people worldwide, having worsened in recent years due to rise in the price of food and the economic crisis.

For the famines in Spain, see History of hunger in Spain.

Initiatives against hunger

In 2005, during the Latin American Summit on Chronic Hunger (Guatemala, September 2005), the Hunger-Free Latin America and Caribbean Initiative was born, a commitment by countries to eradicate hunger. It was launched by FAO, with financial support from the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID).

On August 24, 2006, the World Summit against Hunger was held, led by the governments of Brazil, Chile, Spain and France, in which leaders of 113 countries signed a declaration against world hunger.

In 2010 the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) launched the 1billionhungry project which seeks to pressure governments to address the issue of hunger.

In 2010, the World Food Program (WFP) also launched an initiative called Cash Transfers and Food Stamps. With this tool, WFP is benefiting vulnerable people in places where markets have food available but the population lacks the money to pay for it. Some of the countries that have benefited from this WFP initiative are Afghanistan, Haiti, Burma, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Syria and Zambia.

On October 11, 2010, it was estimated that the number of malnourished people in the world is more than one billion people, out of the total of 7 billion inhabitants in the world.

In addition, in 2011 WFP launched two online initiatives to fight hunger. The first, called Wefeedback, is a community where the people who participate share food and save lives. Also this year, WFP launched FreeRice, an online vocabulary game in which for every correct answer players get, 10 grams of rice will be donated to hungry people.