World Food Policy WFP Volume 4, No. 2, Spring 2018 | Page 13

Global and Regional Perspectives of Food Economy and Policy
2. Challenges
is the percentage of population hungry,
but with population growing the num-
ber of hungry people declines slowly.
Of considerable concern, South Asia
showed essentially no improvement in
the number of hungry people, while
Africa South of the Sahara experience
increases in hunger.
2.1. Nutrition
Looking into the regional trends of nu-
trition, Figure 2.1 shows slow progress
in undernourished people of about a
billion people in the 1990s to around
800 million currently (left figure). Prog-
ress is better on shares of hunger, that
Figure 2.1. Regional trends in malnutrition in a) undernourished people; b) stunted
children; and c) overweight and obesity, 1990s to present.
Sources: Left panel: FAOSTAT3 (http://faostat3.fao.org/download/D/FS/E) middle: de Onis,
M, M. Blössner and E. Borghi. 2011 http://www.who.int/nutgrowthdb/publications/Stunting
1990_2011.pdf; and right: UN in de Onis, M, M. Blössner and E. Borghi. 2010. Glob-
al prevalence and trends of overweight and obesity among preschool children. American
Journal of Clinical Nutrition 92:1257–64. (http://www.who.int/nutgrowthdb/publications/
overweight_obesity/en/).
(Figure 2.1, right hand side) continues
to show large increases not only in Asia
and Africa but at the global level.
In terms of stunted children,
substantial reduction was observed
from the 1990s to present (Figure 2.1.,
middle panel). However, Africa contin-
ued to show increases in the number
of stunted children. Essentially all the
improvement in childhood malnutri-
tion has come in Asia and small con-
tributions from Latin America. Obesity
In addition to undernourish-
ment, childhood stunting, and obesity,
pervasive micronutrient deficiencies
are another serious issue that hampers
achievement of nutrition security. De-
ficiencies in micronutrient is prevalent
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