Does everyone have food? If not, why not?

Sadly no. Nearly 1 billion people on our planet — three times more people than live in the United States — are constantly short of food or near starving. This seems doubly wrong when you think that almost the same number have so much food they get to be overweight and even obese. Couldn’t humans divide things up a little more fairly? We seabirds never eat more than we need. You know why? We can’t afford to get fat! Can you imagine a fat penguin trying to catch a fish? We have to stay sleek and healthy. Humans can get fat and it doesn’t matter (though they might be quite unhappy about it) because they don’t have to hunt their food. They can just get into their cars and drive to the supermarket or takeaway when they feel hungry.

That other billion people — the hungry and starving ones — can’t get enough food to eat because they are so poor. They can’t afford to buy food — or can only afford the very cheapest, low quality stuff no one else wants. If they each had a little piece of land, they could grow their own. But they don’t because most of them live in slums. They can’t get jobs because there are none, so often they have to beg, steal or scavenge the garbage from richer neighbourhoods.

Called favelas in Portuguese-speaking Brazil; pueblos jovenes) in other Spanish-speaking Latin American countries.

What a miserable life.