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Hunger : The Biology And Politics Of Starvation

Decent Essays

“As we write, 1.02 billion people are suffering chronic hunger, one in six persons. For the first time in history, we have crossed the 1 billion mark…“ John Butterly, and Jack Shepherd, two renowned professors at Dartmouth University, detailed in their book ‘Hunger: The Biology and Politics of Starvation.’ How is it that in our country more people are dying from health issues associated with overeating, then from starvation? When worldwide there are mass populations dying without enough to eat? There must be a way to harness our earthly resources to feed our growing world.
It seems this lack in food must be due to a deficiency of the Earth—drought, disease, etc.--and minimally due to the techniques we as human use to obtain the food. Our agricultural methods used today have been developing since our species was new. Hunting and gathering was humanity 's first and most successful adaptation, occupying at least 90 percent of human history. But if his were true then why are only those in poverty dying? Butterly and Shepard go on to say, “More than 50,000 people die daily—30 percent of all human deaths annually—from poverty related causes. These conditions, the result of deprivation, could be prevented easily and cheaply: 884 million people lack safe driking water: 2.6 million billion lack adequate sanitation […] For the bottom billion of the global population, this ‘nutritional crisis’—the result of poverty—is defining.’
The largest portion of this ‘bottom billion’ suffer

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