Food is critical for humans to survive, live and prosper. Food enables good physical development, educational attainment and social participation. Nevertheless, food insecurity is one of the most pressing global issues. Although food might be available in the country, people do not have an equal chance to get it, and many families experience problems in purchasing proper and affordable diets.
Food security is related to many interrelated factors such as food availability, accessibility and nutrition of food purchased by people. Such factors differ from country to country and even from one community to another due to different economic conditions, infrastructures and food systems. Therefore, the improvement in average food availability cannot imply that the issue of undernourishment is solved or that diets became affordable for all individuals.
The discrepancy in food availability and actual situations leads to a question regarding the global food system. To understand hunger, one needs to move beyond the amount of food supplied and consider such factors as access and affordability. Therefore, it is crucial to differentiate between food availability and the ability to buy food and live healthy due to it.
The problem of food security goes beyond food availability. Food security is dependent upon food availability in certain areas, the ability of people to access food, and whether the consumption of a healthy diet is affordable. This report investigates an important issue – how come there is hunger when food availability increases? The story begins with food availability, continues with differences in food availability among countries, moves on to the question of why there is still hunger and whether people can afford healthy food.
For this assignment, the data have been taken from the website Our World in Data (OWID), which is an open data source online. The three datasets utilized for this report include daily per capita caloric availability, prevalence of undernourishment, and the proportion of the population that could not afford a healthy diet.
The datasets have been accessed using the links provided on the website. The datasets were combined by the country and year where required. All the missing values have been excluded from the dataset.
The story starts with the overall scenario across the world over time. In case there is an increase in the availability of food per capita, one would expect hunger to be less widespread. Let’s begin with the numbers.
At the start of the time period shown, in 1990, the world’s per capita dietary energy supply stood at 2579 kilocalories per person per day. By 2023, this number rose to 3006 kilocalories per person per day, an increase of 426 kilocalories per person per day. This represents a significant comparison over time, since it reveals the change in the amount of food available per person.
The use of the line graph makes sense because, beyond showing us two data points, it allows us to move our mouse over the years in order to check if the changes took place consistently or if there were periods where the change was smaller or even negative. Of course, the information provided is an average for the world, not broken down by country or region, and it represents food availability, not consumption.
This difference highlights the key conflict in our story. While an improvement in average food supply does not necessarily imply that all people receive equal treatment. To discover whose interest is overlooked, we need to dig deeper than the average for the entire world.
Now, let’s shift from one worldwide trend to differences across countries. The map employs the most recent year for which data is available from the food-supply database on a country-by-country basis.
The map directs the focus from change over time to differences between places. The minimum country-level value in the data visualized in 2023 was 1811 calories per person per day in Yemen, whereas the maximum was 3947 calories in United States. These numbers indicate significant disparity in the quantity of available food per person in different countries in the same year.
While colours allow us to see geographic patterns, numbers are more valuable for understanding what is going on. Readers will be able to compare countries by moving the cursor over each country separately. It is possible that some countries have significantly larger per capita food availability than other countries even though all of them are included in one global dataset.
It should be noted, however, that the presence of a greater food supply value does not mean that there is no hunger in that country. The national average value cannot explain if people have access to food, how steady this access is, or if it is nutritious at all.
Rather than indicating the availability of food, this number indicates the estimated percentage of people who are malnourished. The top ten country rates are listed here for the most recent year available.
This representation alters the metric totally. Rather than looking for the calories present, it attempts to estimate the proportion of the population expected to be undernourished. From the group of countries observed in 2023, Haiti has the highest proportion within the provided choice, with 54.2% of its population undernourished. In this way, the audience gets an actual example of the human impact associated with the issue of food security.
The use of the horizontal bars makes it simpler to compare the cases in the selected countries. A larger bar translates to a greater percentage of the population impacted. It does not imply that the country has the greatest absolute numbers of undernourished people, since a larger country may have a smaller percentage but a larger number of affected people. Also, the chart is limited to countries with observations only, so it cannot be considered as an exhaustive list.
Linking this graph to the first two shows the need for various measures because food supply refers to availability in the country, while undernourishment deals with inadequate dietary energy consumed by people. These concepts are interconnected; however, they cannot replace each other. The next step would be looking into another barrier – the affordability of healthy eating.
Now we are joining two distinct measures: the proportion of people that cannot afford a healthy diet and the proportion undernourished. We can examine the correlation between them using the scatter plot without assuming causation.
The following chart introduces a new dimension in terms of food security by introducing the affordability factor into the discussion. The comparison is made on the basis of 138 countries which have information regarding both affordability and undernourishment in the year 2023. The correlation between the two factors in the above-mentioned data is 0.76. If there was a positive correlation, it would mean that a country with higher numbers of people who cannot afford a healthy diet also had higher numbers of people undernourished.
Each point represents a country, where the x-axis value is the percentage of people who cannot afford a healthy diet, and the y-axis is the estimated percentage undernourished. The regression line captures the general trend, whereas the distance from the line reminds us that both values are different. For instance, someone might have access to the number of calories needed to prevent undernourishment, but it does not mean that they have access to a diversified diet.
The graph is important since it broadens the context and talks about the issue in terms other than the mere availability of food. A food system can provide enough calories to the country but fail to ensure that its citizens can afford healthy diets. Affordability is just one of the possible aspects; the given data prove nothing about the causes of certain countries’ positions on the chart.
Our final graph brings the story together. This graph compares food availability and undernourishment, but includes the third data set – affordable healthy diets – to bring an additional dimension through color.
The last visualisation is a combined chart for all three datasets on the same scale of countries. In 2023, 132 countries we can observe all three variables. On the horizontal axis there is the average dietary energy supply, on the vertical axis – the proportion of undernourished, and the colour shows the share of people who cannot buy healthy food. This plot differs from a scatter plot with two variables since we can see more than just correlation between the variables.
The correlation of food availability and undernourishment for the presented countries is -0.81. This number reflects the correlation, however, the points themselves are just as important. Countries that have similar values of food-supply can differ in terms of undernourishment or affordability. Such cases do not contradict the story, but rather illustrate its limitations.
From reviewing all of these figures, we have gone from global trends to geographic inequality, to undernourishment, to price and, finally, to a comparison of both together. Now, having taken this journey through our analysis, we can respond to the question raised at the outset with increased precision. Access to food is important, but it alone is not sufficient for determining whether there is access to adequate amounts of food.
The first graph sets up the premise – the average world dietary energy supply has varied through time. It is not meant to imply that the issue of hunger has been solved, but to raise the question whether average availability is enough information to give a complete understanding of food security.
The next graph raises the doubt that a global average may not be sufficient as it shows that different countries report different levels of food supply.
The third graph brings the issue closer to humanity – it shows the level of undernourishment instead of national average food supply figures. The importance of this transition is in the fact that national food-supply figure cannot account for the distribution of food between households within the country. The fourth figure shows the issue of affordability.
The fifth graph is a compilation of all three variables of availability, hunger and affordability. The graph aims at making the readers see both the general pattern as well as those which are not in sync with the general trend. Such differences help explain why food security cannot simply be equated to just one number.
Reading the five graphs together as one story, one can see a progression from availability through time → availability inequality in space → hunger → affordability → an explanation for the paradox.
The first question asked in this report was about why hunger can exist in the presence of sufficient food. From the first to the fifth figure, it becomes obvious that answering the question through analysis of the food situation in the world will not suffice because average availability only provides one side of the story without information on distribution, undernourishment and affordability.
Through going from the global scale down to the country level and using three different indicators in one graph, the report proves the importance of looking at food security from multiple angles. The interactive components make it possible to analyze specific countries and detect differences that would not be visible from just one number.
The main lesson to be learned from all these figures is that food availability, adequate nutrition and affordability are related but not the same outcomes. Improvement in one area does not mean improvement in other areas. This data provides some patterns for further investigation rather than proving causation of any single factor in hunger.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2025a). Daily supply of calories per person [Data set]. Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-caloric-supply
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2025b). Share of people who are undernourished [Data set]. Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/prevalence-of-undernourishment
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, & World Bank. (2025). Share of population that cannot afford a healthy diet [Data set]. Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-healthy-diet-unaffordable
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ChatGPT was used to assist with reviewing the spelling and grammar of the written content, along with its clarity and readability, as well as relevant references and web sources. It has also been used for offering suggestions for improving the sentence construction and explanation flow of the content. These suggestions have been assessed before being included in the assignment.