In politics, humanitarian aid, and the social sciences, hunger is defined as a condition in which a person does not have the physical or financial capability to eat sufficient food to meet basic nutritional needs for a sustained period. In the field of hunger relief, the term hunger is used in a sense that goes beyond the common desire for food that all humans experience, also known as an appetite. The most extreme form of hunger, when malnutrition is widespread, and when people have started dying of starvation through lack of access to sufficient, nutritious food, leads to a declaration of famine.
A soup kitchen, food kitchen, or meal center is a place where food is offered to the hungry and homeless, usually for no cost, or sometimes at a below-market price. Frequently located in lower-income neighborhoods, soup kitchens are often staffed by volunteer organizations, such as church or community groups. Soup kitchens sometimes obtain food from a food bank for free or at a low price, because they are considered a charity, which makes it easier for them to feed the many people who require their services.
The Mid Day Meal Scheme is a school meal programme in India designed to better the nutritional status of school-age children nationwide. The scheme has been renamed as PM-POSHAN Scheme. The programme supplies free lunches on working days for children in government primary and upper primary schools, government aided Anganwadis, Madarsa and Maqtabs. Serving 120 million children in over 1.27 million schools and Education Guarantee Scheme centres, the Midday Meal Scheme is the largest of its kind in the world.
Heifer International is a global nonprofit working to eradicate poverty and hunger through sustainable, values-based holistic community development. Heifer International distributes animals, along with agricultural and value-based training, to families in need around the world as a means of providing self-sufficiency. Recipients must agree to "pass on the gift" by donating animal offspring, as well as sharing the skills and knowledge of animal husbandry and agricultural training with other impoverished families in the community. The organization receives financial support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, BlackRock, Cargill, Mastercard Foundation, Walmart and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.
A school meal is a meal provided to students and sometimes teachers at a school, typically in the middle or beginning of the school day. Countries around the world offer various kinds of school meal programs, and altogether, these are among the world's largest social safety nets. An estimated 380 million school children around the world receive meals at their respective schools. The extent of school feeding coverage varies from country to country, and as of 2020, the aggregate coverage rate worldwide is estimated to be 27%.
Poverty reduction, poverty relief, or poverty alleviation is a set of measures, both economic and humanitarian, that are intended to permanently lift people out of poverty.
Kids Against Hunger is a nonprofit organization owned by Richard Proudfit, up until his death on November 14, 2018. It was established with the mission to significantly reduce the number of hungry children in the United States and to feed starving children throughout the world. This is being achieved by getting volunteers involved, and by setting up food packaging satellites in the US, and through partnerships with humanitarian organizations worldwide – enabling Kids Against Hunger to deliver its specially formulated rice-soy casserole to starving children and their families in over 60 countries. The Kids Against Hunger network currently includes about 100 food packaging centers with the goal to establish 500 packaging centers in all 50 U.S. states.
Food Yoga International, formally Food For Life Global, is a non-profit vegan food relief organization founded in 1995 to serve as the headquarters for Food Yoga International projects. Food Yoga International has its roots in ISKCON dating back to 1974. It is a completely independent non-profit organization that supports the work of Food Yoga International projects both inside and outside of ISKCON. Its network of 291 affiliates span the globe, with projects occupying over 65 countries. Volunteers provide over 1 million free meals daily. Food Yoga International engages in various sorts of hunger relief, including outreach to the homeless, provision for disadvantaged children throughout India, and provision for victims of natural disasters around the world.
Project Bread's Walk for Hunger is the oldest continual pledge walk in the United States and the largest annual one-day fundraiser to alleviate local hunger in Massachusetts.
Food rescue, also called food recovery, food salvage or surplus food redistribution, is the practice of gleaning edible food that would otherwise go to waste from places such as farms, produce markets, grocery stores, restaurants, or dining facilities and distributing it to local emergency food programs.
Despite India's 50% increase in GDP since 2013, more than one third of the world's malnourished children live in India. Among these, half of the children under three years old are underweight.
Rise Against Hunger is an international hunger relief non-profit organization that coordinates the packaging and distribution of food and other aid to people in developing nations. It was founded as Stop Hunger Now in 1998 by Ray Buchanan and John Hewitt. Rise Against Hunger mobilizes more than 400,000 volunteers each year to package meals for people in need around the globe.
Hunger Task Force, Inc. is a non-profit, anti-hunger public policy organization in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Hunger Task Force works to end hunger in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin by providing direct food delivery services, and works to end future hunger by advocating for fair and responsible administration of federal nutrition assistance programs.
There were 735.1 million malnourished people in the world in 2022, a decrease of 58.3 million since 2005, despite the fact that the world already produces enough food to feed everyone and could feed more than that.
Hunger in the United States of America affects millions of Americans, including some who are middle class, or who are in households where all adults are in work. The United States produces far more food than it needs for domestic consumption—hunger within the U.S. is caused by some Americans having insufficient money to buy food for themselves or their families. Additional causes of hunger and food insecurity include neighborhood deprivation and agricultural policy. Hunger is addressed by a mix of public and private food aid provision. Public interventions include changes to agricultural policy, the construction of supermarkets in underserved neighborhoods, investment in transportation infrastructure, and the development of community gardens. Private aid is provided by food pantries, soup kitchens, food banks, and food rescue organizations.
In the United States, school meals are provided either at no cost or at a government-subsidized price, to students from low-income families. These free or subsidized meals have the potential to increase household food security, which can improve children's health and expand their educational opportunities. A study of a free school meal program in the United States found that providing free meals to elementary and middle school children in areas characterized by high food insecurity led to increased school discipline among the students.
Chronic hunger has affected a sizable proportion of the UK's population throughout its history. Following improved economic conditions that followed World War II, hunger became a less pressing issue. Yet since the 2007–2008 world food price crisis that began in late 2006 and especially since the Great Recession, long term hunger began to return as a prominent social problem. Albeit only affecting a small minority of the UK's population, by December 2013, according to a group of doctors and academics writing in the British Medical Journal, hunger in the UK had reached the level of a "public health emergency".
The Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) began in 1968. It was an amendment to the National School Lunch Act. Today, the SFSP is the largest federal resource available for local sponsors who want to combine a child nutrition program with a summer activity program. Sponsors can be public or private groups, such as non-profit organizations, government entities, churches, universities, and camps. The government reimburses sponsors for the food at a set rate. There are still communities that have not created a Summer Food Service Program in their community. For those individuals that want to help ensure children have meals during the summer, they can get more information from the USDA or their state government agencies.
Buddhist Global Relief is an organization of socially engaged Buddhists with a mission to "combat chronic hunger and malnutrition". It was founded by Bhikkhu Bodhi in 2008.
The 1969 White House Conference on Food, Nutrition and Health was a historic first and resulted in landmark legislation. In his opening address on December 2, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon vowed “to put an end to hunger in America…for all time.” The three-day gathering came at the end of a decade of social, cultural, and political change which had resulted in a sudden awareness of the widespread malnutrition and hunger afflicting many poor in the United States. Eight-hundred academics and scientists, business and civic leaders, activists, and politicians developed more than 1,800 recommendations, which were reviewed by the 2,700 conference attendees and delivered in a full report to the President on December 24, 1969. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), National School Lunch Program (NSLP), and the School Breakfast Program (SBP) are among the 1,400 nutrition and food assistance programs and recommendations implemented or improved as a result of the White House Conference. In May 2022, President Joe Biden announced a new White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health which was scheduled to convene on September 28, 2022 in Washington, D.C.
