IGCSE Global Perspectives: Food Availability

Editor's Notes

1. Hello This is Augustin/Patty. And we will be talking about the Introduction to Food and the Lack thereof.
2. This year nearly 9 million children younger than the age of 5 will die needlessly, and more than half will be from hunger-related causes.
3. And more than 20 thousand children die everyDAY from hunger related causes. Most of these children are mildly or moderately undernourished, only few of these deaths are just plainly related to starvation, but most of the times, because their bodies are unable to fight illnesses like diarrhea, malaria and measles that move in on vulnerable children whose bodies have been weakened by hunger, while these are common illnesses our bodies could easily overcome.
4. In the developing world, more than 1.4 billion people currently live below the international poverty line, earning less than a dollar and 25 cents per day.
5. Among this group of poor people, many have problems obtaining adequate, nutritious food for themselves and their families. As a result, 1.02 billion people in the developing world are undernourished, which negatively affects people’s health, productivity, sense of hope and overall well-being.
6. Famine is a long time of general scarcity of food.
7. Malnutrition is the lack of some or all nutritional elements necessary for human health.
8. Micro-nutrient deficiency is another type of malnutrition referring to the deficiency of vitamins and minerals
9. Protein-energy malnutrition is a another type of malnutrition which is a lack of enough protein and food that provides energy. This is the type of malnutrition usually referred to when talking about hunger.
10. Chronic hunger is the long term hunger caused by lack of availability of food.
11. Temporary Hunger is a short term hunger caused by disruption to normal supplies due to war or natural disasters, such as floods, droughts, typhoons, etc.
12. This is a scale of where countries stand on the amount of daily calorie intake. And as we can see United states comes first with 3770 calories per day. And we can see how these are all developed countries mostly in Europe, and plus United States.
13. Then here on the lesser end of the line, are African countries, all developing or undeveloped countries, with a calorie intake in the 2000s or even 1000s, while the estimated average requirements are a daily calorie intake of 1940 per day for women and 2550 for men stated by the UK department of health. And these countries all have a daily calorie intake less than average for men. As we read the names of these countries we notice they are mostly from developing countries in Africa, the Middle east and South east Asia.
14. Or here is a map of the calorie intake per capita. The highest calorie intake per capita of 3,270 to 3,770 in the darker blues being in Canada and the United States and central Europe including France, Germany, Italy, Portugal etc first and also Norway, England, Turkey in the second darkest shade of blue. Following are the a little bit lighter ones, with a calorie intake per capita ranging from 2,620 to 3,270 including Australia and New Zealand, Russia, South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, And few of the northern and southern African countries such as Algeria, Libya, Egypt and South Africa. Then the lowest calorie intake of less than 2,620 in the pale blue and mint greens and white are countries in central Africa, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Many South east Asian countries like Indonesia, Philippines and Laos.
15. Here is a map of International fast food availability, and we can tell very quickly, how big America and some other countries are, with almost 45% of the fast food outlets located within the United States and the next biggest number are located in Canada, Germany and Japan. Then immediately we notice the shrunken countries of Asia and the Middle East, and the almost non-existing continent of Africa.
16. And here is a map of the underweight children in the world. And we can see the slim figure of North America and European countries, indicating the little amount of underweight children. And in the East side, South-eastern and northern Africa, Eastern Asia and Asia Pacific are bloated with underweight children, especially countries like Ethiopia, Indonesia, Nigeria and China.
17. In conclusion, we see the trend of Food Availability, where Developed countries like American and countries in central Europe being the most secure and available in food supply and developing countries like China, India and many African Countries in the north and south-most tips the food is less available to them shown through the amount of calorie intake, fast food consumption and underweight population. And in places such as sub-Saharan Africa have very little food availability resulting in very low calorie intake, sometimes below the average calorie intake level and a big underweight and malnourished population.