{"id":18910,"date":"2011-06-03T10:11:28","date_gmt":"2011-06-03T17:11:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.worldvision.org\/?p=18910"},"modified":"2020-06-05T17:28:08","modified_gmt":"2020-06-06T00:28:08","slug":"national-hunger-awareness-month-hunger-fast-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.worldvision.org\/blog\/national-hunger-awareness-month-hunger-fast-facts","title":{"rendered":"National Hunger Awareness Month: Hunger fast facts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

June is National Hunger Awareness Month. This weekend, more than 8,000 students across the country will participate in World Vision’s 30 Hour Famine<\/a>. They’ll experience hunger while raising funds to care for children who face this stark reality every day — going to bed hungry.
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In the past half-decade, global food prices have reached historic highs. The grocery store — and restaurants, when we can afford them — account for greater portions of our paychecks. Eating in or eating out costs more now than it did even seven or eight years ago.<\/p>\n

But where increasing food prices are merely a source of frustration for Americans, they can be devastating to people who live in poverty in other parts of the world.<\/p>\n

In places like sub-Saharan Africa, where staple foods like grains account for nearly half of all calories consumed, rising food prices can cripple families and communities. The price of maize increased by 80% in just two years. Wheat prices shot up 70%, while the cost of rice increased by 25%.<\/p>\n

Basic nutritional necessities like these have become impossibly expensive for people already captive to poverty — many of whom live on less than $2 a day.<\/p>\n

As a result, 115 million more people have joined the ranks of the hungry around the world.<\/p>\n