Today we produce enough food to meet the nutritional needs of every person on the earth but one in six people in developing countries aren't getting enough to eat.  Poverty is the root cause of hunger and malnutrition because it prevents poor people from being able to grow or buy enough food.

Food security is when everyone is a specific area has access everyday to enough nutritious food to have a healthy and active lifestyle.  In many developing countries there is not enough food being produced to feed their people.  Many developing countries are also too poor to import enough food for there to be food security.  

People suffer from hunger or chronic undernutrition when they are unable to buy or grow enough food to meet their basic energy needs.  Many of these people live in developing countries.  They are likely to have stunted growth and be much more likely to die from infectious diseases like measles and diarrhea which don't usually kill kids in developed countries.

Many of the poor people of the world can only afford to live on a low protein, high carbohydrate, vegetarian diet which consists only of grains like wheat, corn, and rice.  A lot of these people suffer from malnutrition resulting from deficiencies of proteins, calories and other important nutrients.  Every year an estimated 6 million children will die prematurely from malnutrition, undernutrition, and increased susceptibility to normally nonfatal infectious diseases.  In 2003, 35 million Americans went hungry at times due to poverty.

Overnutrition is when a person's food energy intake exceeds their energy use.  This causes excess body fat.  Eating too much, exercising too little, or a combination of both can cause overnutrition.  People that are underfed and underweight and people that are overfed and overweight have similar health problems including a lower life epectancy, more illness and disease, and lower life quality.

1 billion people have health problems because they don't get enough to eat.  1.2 billion people have health problems because they eat too much.  1/4 of people in the world are overweight and 1/20 of people are obese.