(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - “Nearly 1 billion people go to bed hungry each night, a number that is unacceptably high,” Director of Worldwatch's nourishing the Planet project, Danielle Nierenberg said.
According to the Washington-based independent research institute, nearly one billion people worldwide, many of them children have micronutrient deficiency, a condition that lowers their ability to learn or have a productive life.
Each year, between 250 million and 500 million children with vitamin A deficiency become blind and half of them die within 12 months of losing their sight.
Malnutrition contributes to the death of 500 million children under the age of five every year, and in Africa, a child dies every six seconds from hunger.
This is while roughly 1.3 billion tons of food, a third of the total amount produced for human consumption, is lost or wasted each year.
Only within the United States, food retailers, food services, and households waste approximately 40 million tons of food each year, which is about the same amount needed to feed the estimated 1 billion hungry people worldwide.
Meanwhile despite the fact that the number of people unable to read has decreased from 1 billion in 1990's, over 792 million people worldwide are still uneducated, as illiteracy continues to prevent millions of people from moving out of poverty.
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