undernourishment

Undernourishment is how hunger is counted. The Food and Agriculture Organization, the UN agency responsible for the official global hunger statistics, operationalises hunger as the consumption of an insufficient amount of dietary energy to maintain a normal, active, healthy life. The indicator built on that definition is the prevalence of undernourishment, which measures the proportion of a population whose food consumption is insufficient to meet dietary energy requirements.

It tracks chronic hunger rather than a missed meal, and FAO describes it as the traditional way of measuring hunger at global and regional level. Two limits follow. It counts dietary energy, so it says nothing about whether a diet is nutritious or varied, and it is a population estimate rather than a headcount of named individuals, which is why it is reported as a percentage alongside a number of people. For the wider picture FAO pairs it with food insecurity, a survey measure that asks people directly about going without. Both are used to monitor Sustainable Development Goal 2, the pledge to end hunger by 2030.