Читать книгу The Atlas of Food - Erik Millstone - Страница 16

Feeding the World

MORE THAN ENOUGH FOOD is produced to feed everyone in the world, and yet more than 850 million people do not get enough food to lead active and healthy lives. They are consuming too little protein and energy to sustain a healthy weight, and suffer from deficiencies in the composition of their diet that leave them vulnerable to disease. In 2005, the UN FAO estimated that the world’s total production of cereals was about 2.2 billion tonnes. Divided equally between the 6.5 billion people in the world, that would give each person approximately 340 kilograms of cereal a year – sufficient to provide at least 2,000 calories of energy a day for everyone. Most undernourished people live in countries where food is in chronically short supply because of war, natural disasters, poor food distribution, low productivity, or a number of these factors combined. What they all have in common is that they are poor. In wealthy countries, by contrast, the amount of food available is sufficient for people to be able to consume significantly more than the 2,500 calories recommended by nutritionists, even though the food they eat may result in the other extreme of poor nutrition – obesity. Country averages hide wide disparities. In the fast-growing economies of Brazil, China, and India, the more prosperous citizens are switching to western-style diets, high in animal fats and sugars, while their poorest compatriots spend an ever-higher proportion of their household income on food, and still suffer from undernutrition. The World Food Programme and other agencies aim to supply the most vulnerable people with basic foodstuffs, responding both to long-term needs and to emergency situations as they arise.

Bolivia

Severe floods in 2007 and 2008 left thousands of families in need of WFP assistance.

18