Nearly one out of eight people on Earth suffer from chronic malnutrition, according to a United Nations report. U.N. Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon said 17,000 children die from hunger-related causes every day.

World Food Day was Oct. 15 and aimed to fight this. The holiday commemorates the formation of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, according to its website.

World Food Day addresses ending hunger and poverty, providing food security and nutrition, achieving sustainable development and protecting the environment, according to FAO’s website.

One place in Carbondale addressing food security in southern Illinois is the Good Samaritan House of Carbondale.

The house was set up in 1985 to provide an emergency shelter, transitional housing program, soup kitchen, food pantry and an emergency assistance program in southern Illinois, according to the agency’s website.

Patty Mullen, assistant director of Good Samaritan Ministries, said government subsidies affect her organization as well.

“It is very hard to get healthy foods for the people who come to the food pantry, as our USDA commodities have not been the greatest,” Mullen said. “We are seeing a lot of the same [issues] in many pantries in our area. Many things you can’t really make a meal out of.”

Churches and donations from the community allow the center to stay open and keep providing services for people without sufficient food, Mullen said.

The FAO reports food security is not only a problem for impovershed countries—even the United States has a hunger problem. Fourteen percent of Americans do not have enough to eat, according to United States Department of Agriculture Statistics.

Hunger is not the only food-related problem Americans face. Jessica Crowe, an assistant professor of sociology at SIU, said poor nutrition is a challenge because healthy foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables are more expensive than junk food. This causes people to choose cheaper, less-nutritious foods over healthful foods, she said.

“It is harder to eat healthy with a low income,” Crowe said. “You’ll get more calories off of the dollar menu than you would eating something healthy”

Access to fresh foods is an issue around the country and in southern Illinois, Leslie Duram, professor of geography at SIU and director of SIU’s environmental studies program Duram said.

“There are many areas in southern Illinois where people do not have access to healthy, affordable food,” Duram said.

Southern Illinois has a problem with food deserts, Duram said. Food deserts are parts of the country without easy access to fresh fruits, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods. They are usually found in impoverished areas, according to the USDA website.

People in food deserts rely on convenience stores, gas stations and drug stores instead of supermarkets which have more nutritious options, Crowe said.

“You see people [in food deserts] rely on places like Seven-Eleven for food more than grocery stores,” Crowe said.

Small convenience stores mainly sell processed food that contains high amounts of salt, sugar, and artificial ingredients, she said.

Crowe said she is still optimistic about many programs aimed at addressing the issue of poor nutrition and food deserts. To help give low-income people more healthful options, many farmers markets have begun accepting Link cards and other forms of government assistance.

New York City’s FRESH program is one idea that has become popular. This gives tax incentives to stores that provide healthy foods in poor neighborhoods, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website.

The disparity in price between foods with high nutrition and low nutrition leads to things like obesity and diabetes, Crowe said. The main cause of this price disparity is government subsidies, she said.

“They subsidize corn, wheat and soybeans, which makes them very cheap,” Crowe said. “That is why they put corn in everything.”

Subsidies made high-fructose corn syrup, a type of sugar derived from corn, the most common sweetener in American food today, Crowe said.

“[Food providers] put [corn syrup] in everything today,” Crowe said. “They put corn syrup in foods that don’t need it just because it is so cheap.”

Those sentiments were shared by Duram.

“They put corn syrup in foods that previously were not sweetened like spaghetti sauce and soup to add flavor,” Duram said. “We need to rethink our priorities, so that fruits and vegetables are cheaper than junk food.”

Addressing food scarcity on an international level is a tougher prospect, Crowe said.

“The root cause of food scarcity is politics and global inequality,” she said. “There is enough food in the world to feed every person on the planet but political and economic factors lead to unequal distribution of it.”

By 2050, food scarcity may cause a bigger problem because most of the population growth will be in poor nations and the world’s population is expected to reach 9 billion, Crowe said.

The world has won major battles fighting food scarcity. Since 1990, the chance of a child dying before age 5 due to malnutrition has been cut in half. Extreme poverty rates have also been reduced by half, according to the FOA.