841 Million Undernourished? On the Tyranny of Deriving a Number

The FAO provides estimates of the prevalence of undernutrition which are claimed to be comparable over countries and time. These estimates form the empirical foundation for the resolution adopted by 186 governments at the World Food summit in 1996, with the intent of reducing the number of undernourished people by half before the year 2015. In this paper, it is demonstrated that the FAO estimates are unreliable indicators of the scope of the undernutrition problem, that they erroneously find chronic undernutrition to be most prevalent in Africa, and that they tend to direct policy in the wrong direction. Anthropometric measurements are argued to be more reliable and relevant for all purposes for which indicators of undernutrition are needed.