Venezuela has solved its hunger problem? Don’t believe the U.N.’s numbers.

The United Nations has honored Venezuela for winning the fight against hunger. That seems wrong. The MDGs used two measures of progress toward the goal of halving the proportion of hungry people in the world. The first is the ‘prevalence of undernourishment’ (PoU) indicator produced by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The second is the percentage of children under 5 who are underweight, based on calculations provided by the World Health Organization and UNICEF. Last year, the FAO held an award ceremony to honor countries that the FAO claims have met their MDG goal using these numbers. Countries such as Venezuela, Angola, Nepal, Egypt and Bangladesh were among those honored, with the FAO proclaiming that Venezuela and Egypt, among others, had reached the lowest category of hunger possible on their scale. These countries had brought the proportion of hunger down to 5 percent or less. More…