Top 5 Facts about Starvation

It's interesting to think about the mechanisms that your body enacts in order to prevent itself from starving to death. Glucose is the body's main source of energy, and our glucose stores from eating a meal last for about six hours. Our glucose reserves last for anywhere between 24 and 48 hours, and then the body enters ketosis, which means that it is surviving on your stores of fatty acids. Once those are depleted, the body will literally eat away at its own muscles for protein. Assuming it remains hydrated, the body can then survive on the bare minimum amounts of energy required for 30-60 days, and even up to 70 in some cases, before dying of starvation.

While it may not be as painful as some other practices, starvation was once used as an agonizing form of torture and capital punishment, and was even practiced until the early 20th century in Mongolia. This was often accomplished by immurement, the process of walling up someone in an enclosed space, usually in order to dehydrate and starve them to death. Captives were sometimes given small amounts of water to sustain the body in order to maximize the length and severity of the sentence, as was the case with serial killer Elizabeth “The Blood Countess” Bathory, who was immured for four years before dying of causes other than starvation. King Richard II of England starved to death while imprisoned in the Tower of London, though some believe he was just straight up murdered.

Researchers in Överkalix, Sweden examined centuries of the town’s meticulously kept records on the citizens’ health and annual crop yields. They found that individuals who suffered through periods of famine when they were between eight and twelve years old produced healthier offspring than those who had sufficient food supplies. For example, those with a grandfather who suffered through a prepubescent famine had one quarter the risk of heart disease, were less prone to diabetes, and lived longer lives. Critics argue that these records alone can't tell the whole story, and without molecular evidence we should basically ignore this data. But nevertheless, it's interesting to think that your grandpa’s health could affect yours

Climate change is detrimental to both the environment and our food supplies, as the changes are bringing about more floods and droughts than ever before, contributing to the breakdown of our food systems. The World Food Programme estimates that as much as 1 in 9 people currently do not have enough food to maintain a healthy lifestyle, but this could dramatically increase in thirty years' time. The WFP conclude that without proper intervention, world hunger could increase by as much as 20% by the year 2050. This is because most of the world's hungry populations live in areas prone to significant hazards caused by climate change.

On the bright side, even if hunger levels are poised to rise, the world has done a fairly decent job at lowering rates of hunger in the last couple of decades. The World Food Programme estimates that 12.9% of the current world's population does not have enough food, which is down from 23.3% in the early 1990s. 72 out of 129 countries monitored by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations have achieved their Millennium Development Goal of cutting malnourishment around the world in half by 2015. Despite the population growing by 1.9 billion people in the last 25 years, there are 216 million fewer undernourished people today. Let’s just hope we can keep climate change under control.

So, what do you think? Will we ever make world hunger a thing of the past? For more gluttonous top tens and malnourished top fives published every day, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.