Malnutrition has been linked to poverty and food insecurity. However, it is also a paradox leading to under-nutrition and recurring hunger and over-nutrition.

Today, experts have identified a new kind of hunger—one caused not by lack of food but by food that lacks essential micronutrients necessary for growth and development. 

The 1,000 days between a woman’s pregnancy and her child’s second birthday offer a brief but critical window of opportunity to shape a child’s development.

What does a world without hunger look like? It looks like everyone having the nutritious meals they need to flourish. Churches, charities, food banks, and non-profit organizations cannot get there alone. Government programs and policies play an important role too.

How is it possible that children still die from hunger, and far more still suffer from stunting or other hunger-related illnesses? What more can we do to help prevent this tragedy?

The presence of major life-taking famines has diminished significantly and abruptly as compared to earlier eras. This is not in anyway to underplay the very real risk facing the roughly 80 million people currently living in a state of crisis-level food insecurity and therefore requiring urgent action. Nevertheless, the parts of the world that continue to be at risk of famine represent a much more limited geographic area than in previous eras, and those famines that have occurred recently have typically been far less deadly.

With Yemen now in its fifth year of conflict between pro-Government forces and Houthi rebels, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) is calling for “unhindered access” to the most desperate areas in the frontline regions “to prevent the food security situation deteriorating”.

One in every nine people in the world go hungry every day. That amounts to 821 million people. But we produce enough food to feed all 7.5 billion people on Earth today.

So what gives?

Even as groups that work to end hunger celebrate incredible achievements, it is important not to lose sight of how far we still have to go. In 2018, we are still not on track to eradicate hunger in our lifetime, even though all 191 U.N. member states vowed in 2000 to end hunger by 2015.

Worldwide, the number of hungry people has dropped significantly over the past two decades, but 795 million people continue to struggle with hunger every day.

Since the turn of the century, the global fight against malaria has been marked by a steady series of advances resulting in millions of cases averted and millions of lives saved. The effort represents one of public health’s greatest triumphs: mortality caused by the disease plummeted by nearly 60%.

From India to Indiana, Kenya to Kentucky, mothers and children everywhere need good nutrition and nurturing care in the first 1,000 days in order to thrive.