Sarah Ford | September 19, 2014

Three Hunger Words You Probably Misuse and Don鈥檛 Understand

By Phil Moses

Think about the time you last said that you 鈥渓oved鈥 a thing in your house like a new mixer or a garage door opener. Or, when you voiced a desire to 鈥渃ollapse鈥 after work when you were just extra tired. Or even when you cried and cried about something that really wasn鈥檛 worth tears.

In 精东影业n culture, we have a tendency to exaggerate how we feel.听 We love strong and dramatic metaphors. We use words out of context all the time.

We say our ice cream is awesome and so are our mothers. We say we want to kill someone when听we鈥檙e just slightly annoyed.听 We say we鈥檙e starving because听we didn鈥檛 eat听lunch until听3 pm.

奥别鈥檙别听补濒濒听guilty of such contextual language errors.

When听we talk about childhood hunger, many听of us are 听just as guilty of misusing words, or we鈥檙e just plain confused. We hear the term food security and wonder, 鈥滻s this about keeping children safe? Or setting security guards around food supplies?鈥 We鈥檙e not exactly sure what the difference is between a hungry child and one who is malnourished (though one does seem more severe), or between children who are malnourished and children who are stunted.听And if they鈥檙e different, are those differences significant?

Feed the Children wants to defeat childhood hunger with advocates like you. 听To do this, we鈥檙e taking some time to听define some of these key terms so we can understand each other better and be better advocates.

>> September is Hunger Action Month. Support Feed the Children.

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