Welcome to the week.
Good news: the latest UN numbers show hunger has fallen worldwide since its 2022 peak. In 2025, 645 million people faced hunger, which is 43 million fewer than three years earlier.
So it’s progress, but ideally that number can be 0. This week, we’re looking at where hunger is falling, where it isn’t, and what’s going on at home.
Let’s go.
— Willow
APL Positions of the week:
🍎 Scale child nutrition interventions globally (learn more)
🥗 SNAP benefits adequate for a healthy diet (learn more)
🍛 Hot meals allowed under SNAP (learn more)
👉️ NEW: Discover all of our APL Positions here.
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Hunger is down, not out
The UN’s latest hunger report, released in July, found that 43 million fewer people faced hunger in 2025 than in 2022. But 645 million people still do, about 1 in 13 people on Earth.
Let’s start there, before taking a look at the story closer to home: SNAP enrollment in the US has dropped by more than 5 million people since July 2025 (Civil Eats).
The Global Picture
The latest estimate from the UN’s State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report estimates about 7.8% of people worldwide still don’t get enough to eat — down from 8.1% in 2024 and 8.6% at the 2022 peak (FAO).
But that progress is uneven. In Africa, about 1 in 5 people face hunger (about 309 million people). About 520 million people could still face hunger in 2030, putting the world off track for its zero-hunger goal.
The Deal at Home
Counting moderate to severe food insecurity, meaning people who can’t regularly afford a healthy diet, the UN estimates 8.7% of people in North America and Europe are affected (FAO).
In the US, SNAP enrollment fell by more than 5 million people between July 2025 and June 2026, a 17-year low. The drop is attributed to stricter work requirements and more paperwork (Civil Eats). Meanwhile, food banks are reporting more demand: 75% of 90 major food banks surveyed by NBC News said so (NBC News).
So What:
Globally, the numbers say hunger is falling, slowly and unevenly.
The UN credits economic policy, social protection, and investment in food systems for the drop. We need to double down on those interventions to speed up progress, and make sure progress reaches everyone.
The SNAP drop measures how many people are getting help, not how many people are hungry.
It’s worth watching because food assistance is one of the main ways to keep people fed, and we can’t solely rely on food banks to fill the gaps.
Be Heard: Tell Congress to let SNAP recipients buy hot prepared food, and support the Hot Foods Act (go).
Learn: Understand the root causes of food insecurity in the US, and what works, with the Congressional Hunger Center’s Food Insecurity Causes & Solutions course (go).
Donate (US): Support Feeding America to help fight hunger nationwide (go).
Donate (Global): Back Action Against Hunger, which helps treat severely malnourished children worldwide (go).
👉 NEW: Find every action recommended in It’s Called Science right here.
✅ Fact Check
Last week, we asked: In the early 1900s, Europe's Eurasian beaver population had fallen to roughly 1,200 animals. Today it's about how many?
The correct answer: more than 1.2 million. Per Our World in Data, beavers were reintroduced in more than 25 European countries, and their numbers grew more than a thousandfold. Nearly half of you guessed 120,000, which is a big comeback, but the real one is even bigger.
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🌳 Amazon deforestation is at a record low.
Brazil cleared 3,335 square kilometers of Amazon forest in the 12 months prior to July 31, 2026, the lowest on record, according to the government’s space research institute, INPE (Mongabay).
🗳 Cost of living comes first for Black swing-state voters.
A survey of 2,000 Black and Latino voters in seven swing states found that 9% of Black voters ranked climate change among their top three voting issues, compared with 74% who picked the cost of living (Capital B News).
🌰 Chestnut trees are caught in a data center fight.
A roughly one-acre grove of American chestnuts has survived about 35 years of blight, and now sits inside the planned 2,250-acre Monarch Compute Campus in West Virginia (404 Media).
That’s it for this week.
Thank you — as always — for giving a shit.
— Willow
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