Talk:Starvation

Definition

Dictionaries define starvation as death or suffering caused by of lack of nutrition (http://onelook.com/?w=starvation&ls=a). Here, starvation is defined as the lack of nutrition itself. Isn't the first definition better? OpenScience (talk) 13:16, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. The current definition suggest that any "severe deficiency in caloric energy intake" is starvation and is "the most extreme form of malnutrition". Which implies that fasting and most diets which involve healthy nutrients intake with caloric restriction, are form of malnutrition i.e. cause health problems. --87.68.79.160 (talk) 21:41, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

So what? I don't understand your point. If I restrict my caloric intake for a sufficient length of time, I'm not starving because it's voluntary?? I disagree and I think you should rethink that. More globally, starvation could be (but as far as I know, is not) defined as a sustained negative calorie balance between nutrition and calories expended. If I could adjust an animal's calories, day-after-day, so that the calories I allowed it were 1 calorie less than what it used, it would eventually die. That is the (hypothetical) reality; that would be starvation. Usually starvation is more acute and immediate, but my point is it doesn't have to be. On the other hand, I doubt there is any way to determine whether starvation was "the" primary cause of death. Why? Because it's like falling off a cliff: it's not the fall that kills you; it's the sudden stop. Meaning it's not the starvation itself that kills, it's the loss of biochemical and physiological function. Starvation results in immune system dysfunction, organ damage, and inability to maintain core body temperature - all of which can be, and eventually will be, fatal. Generally, the best that can be done is the determination that together with cause X (most often infection), malnutrition symptoms were observed. That is to say, the starvation was a co-factor (with significant but undetermined effect).174.130.71.156 (talk) 08:43, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Common Causes

Add Tuberculosis - weight loss is a classic symptom of active TB

dicuss the problems which contribute to famine.{ un-equal distribution of food, draught,flooding,increasing population.}

Stats

Where do these statistics come from? The cited source, [1], does not have them.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.160.14.120 (talk) 17:22, 22 February 2007 (UTC).

i agree with this: i'd like to know where they come from too.... Boud 12:21, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

i found it - two of the statistics are from the last paragraph of the first section of the BBC report: The report's chapter on agriculture says about 25,000 people die daily from hunger, with an estimated 815 million people suffering from malnutrition. Of course, it would be good to get closer to the source of the data. i also found http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsummit/english/fsheets/malnutrition.pdf which is on the FAO's web pages, but if you look at the pdf file (as a plain text file) and scroll down to the bottom, you'll see that its last date of modification is in 2001: <xap:ModifyDate>2001-10-05T11:27:31+02:00</xap:ModifyDate> Anyone digging up more recent data would be most welcome... Boud 12:47, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

The mortality rates in the article are misleading. I think the page should really only mention deaths that are a direct result of starvation, or at least mention the difference between deaths cause by starvation and deaths where starvation was a factor. Most of the referenced material acknowledges that the given numbers reflect deaths where starvation was a factor, but not always the cause of death.Treshnell

The mortality statistics also seem to conflict with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate. The article claims 58% of deaths but far more seem to be caused by cardiovascular disease. Maybe they mean out of non aging related deaths. Lonjers (talk) 06:02, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

If you take the world population as 6,897,000,000 and 4.2 deaths out of every 100000 per year, you get 289,674 starvations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.98.11.188 (talk) 00:17, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

The "Starvation Statistics" section does not give any starvation statistics. ChicagoLarry (talk) 18:13, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

How long to starve?

How long does it take to actually die from starvation? I have looked around and can't find a timeline. I just find 'starvation can be used to kill people', which is obvious. I would imagine the time would be about 3 weeks to a month. Hopefully not more. I don't think I can imagine staving for that long.

I suppose it does depend on how much mass you have. Piepants 10:37, 14 December 2006 (UTC)Piepants

Yes, a highly obese person may survive several months with only water, since they have large stores of fat in their adipose tissue, which can readily be broken down into fatty acids and metabolized. It would also depend on other factors, for example proteins are also needed, which required amino acids. Some can be synthesized from basic monomers, but others are essential in the diet so would could only be created by breaking down existing muscle. More information is needed on this in the article, eventhough there can be no precise answer. Richard001 07:01, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I think this article should have some data on this elementary question. I came to this article to find out how long an average person would take to starve to death, for a paper I'm writing, and found no information at all. Readers have complained about it on this Talk page before. --Chetvorno^TALK 23:40, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

It depends basically entirely on fat reserves and maintenance of micronutrients and electrolytes. Angus Barbieri's fast is the record; he lost 276 pounds fasting for 382 days, with non-caloric supplements and close medical supervision. The fattest man alive, Jon Brower Minnoch, weighed 1400 lbs, so extrapolating he could potentially have fasted for over 1,700 days (over 4.5 years) if he was careful. Most people would not try this experiment. (Edit: Minnoch's article estimates 900 lb of his weight was retained fluid from edema, so his actual potential fast is probably no more than 2 years or so.) Comment997345401 (talk) 15:49, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

what exactly is malutriton? and how long doese it really take for the effects of starvation to show? this is for a homeeconomics homework assigment so pleeease help...x

Behavior Section

""Collecting recipes" is the most significant behavioral alteration due to starvation (for westerners). That is why it is the topic sentence of this paragraph. We sincerely hope you will finish reading this paragraph in spite of the poor choice of relevant or accurate information included."

Could someone please rewrite this? That's not encyclopedic style by any stretch... 134.82.97.14 22:06, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Biochemistry of Starvation

Good day. I cleaned up the paragraph, but I wanted someone's opinion on my paragraph before I entered it in. I appreciate the time to look over my paragraph.

My paragraph:

The glycogen storage is used up and the level of insulin in the circulation is low and the level of glucagon is very high. The main means of energy production is lipolysis. The TCA cycle helps the gluconeogenesis convert [[glycerol and fatty acids the acetyl CoA produces the energy used. Two systems of energy enter the gluconeogenesis, proteolysis provides alanine and Lactate produced from pyruvate. Too much Acetyl CoA produces ketone bodies, which can be detected in an urine exam. The brain starts to use ketone bodies as a source of energy.

I took out during a starvation or prolonged fast because I thought it was already self explanatory with Biochemistry of starvation as a title. I added the two lactate and proteolysis sentences together because it sounded better to both systems that enter the gluconeogenesis. I also kind rewrote the citric acid sentence as well because it was a hard read. It was understandable, but a hard read.Rem Nightfall (talk) 16:38, 26 May 2008 (UTC)Rem Nightfall

Treatment and Recovery sections

The sections 'Recovery' and 'Treatment' need to be cleaned up, and merged.

Possibly more information and medical professional link to sources? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.5.162.99 (talk) 22:53, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Abuse

I didn't see anything about child abuse and neglect. This definitely happens. If nothing else, a link to neglect, abuse or child abuse in the 'see also' section should be there. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.253.134.49 (talk) 00:19, 26 August 2009 (UTC) Child abuse and neglect have nothing to do with starvation.

Merge

There seems to be too much overlapping information. It is suggested that we split the hunger article into hunger(motivation) and hunger(malnutrition). We could then merge the hunger(malnutrition) article with this starvation article. Nicehumor (talk) 19:34, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Statistics on 'Carrying Capacity'

From the Stats section "In 2007, 923 million people were reported as being undernourished, an increase of 80 million since 1990-92.[5] It has also been recorded that the world already produces enough food to support the world's population — 6 billion people — and could support double — 12 billion people."

12 billion is surely a slight exaggeration. I believe that 12 billion is a figure for the supposed carrying capacity of the earth, but this is short term carrying capacity and means at 100% land use. It means all natural areas given over to farming- no forests, no mountains, no bogs, no wilderness, how long would the ecosystem last then? Strictly 'carrying capacity' could be increased even further to over 30 billion simply by covering over the oceans. :)
Alternately carrying capacity could be driven even further using ultra industrial scale artificial-biomes, deep in the realms of sci fi the Earth could support 100 billion or even 1 trillion people.

Realistically if long term survival including a natural biosystem is required the number is somewhere probably less than 5 billion, climate change would reduce this by about 1/3 to 1/2. I suggest a look at the Wikipedia page Carrying Capacity which carefully tries to avoid giving figures at all. BTW 12 billion is a figure I think came from a science extrapolation book written by Isaac Asimov, called 'Extraterrestrial Civilizations' . - Lucien86 (talk) 02:39, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

what plz is the role of authorties of starvation ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.235.30.200 (talk) 17:24, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Hunger mortality statistics - POV

The section on hunger mortality statistics is presented in a misleading way as to exaggerate the problem. It simply isn't true that "X number of people die every second" from hunger, but phrasing things that way makes the problem sound so much worse. This is not the way to write a neutral article, regardless of the issue at hand.

And the idea that hunger would be the cause of 58 % of all deaths world-wide is absolutely ridiculous. That stuff needs to be rewritten.

The actual mortality numbers, in both absolute and relative terms, should be presented first. It should be explained that hunger as mortality cause is a secondary cause, and not a direct one etc. After this one may possibly relate the problem of hunger to other aspects of human life and problems, to put it in perspective. But it is wrong to start out with the most sensationalist framing possible. Koyos (talk) 13:40, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

I have now checked the three provided sources for the quotes on hunger mortality [1], [2] and [3].

• None of the sources are links to studies or data on the actual subject. Instead they are all political documents issued within the UN as part of a campaign for a "Right to Food".
• One source is a cross-reference to the Ziegler document, a document which itself provides no source.
• None of the source documents provide any foot notes, sources or references themselves; the numbers are simply in there without references!

These numbers have no source. They seem extremely exaggerated and might as well be made up. I'm removing them until an adequate source is provided. Koyos (talk) 17:00, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Although I have not fully checked Koyos' claims that all of these references are deficient, I did choose one statistic at random just as a quick check to ensure that this is not a sophisticated case of vandalism. The deleted sentence I chose to research is: "On the average, a person dies every second as a direct or indirect result of malnutrition - 4000 every hour - 100 000 each day - 36 million each year - 58 % of all deaths (2001-2004 estimates)." The reference originally given in the Malnutrition article referred to [4] (pdf), where I found the statistic in point 7 of the introduction. The report cited the information in footnote 6, which led to [5] (pdf). Unfortunately, that particular information was not in this ancillary report. The chain of references seems to be broken here, so (at least in this one case), Koyos appears to be correct in saying this fact is not well sourced.

However, the last bullet point by Koyos above is not strictly correct. The source document I checked is the first one Koyos checked, and I would say that it is not true that the document does not provide footnotes. As I stated in the previous paragraph, the report did in fact cite a previous report--one which was not political in any way. Yet the cited source did not in fact show the data I expected it to show. So despite my disagreement with Koyos on his third bullet point, I nonetheless must agree with him on the one statistic I checked as being insufficiently sourced.

I should mention that I have worked for a long time in a hunger nonprofit, and have actually used these statistics personally on a number of occasions when writing for Share Our Strength. I admit to being surprised that the chain of references in the particular case I chose to research was broken so quickly. However, I strongly encourage an editor with more time than me to research all of the other content that was removed. Such a large blanking of content should not go by unvetted. Were it I that had found this error rather than Koyos, I would have put in an unsourced tag after deleting the bad source, rather than delete mass amounts of content outright. — Eric Herboso 08:50, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Contradiction with Malnutrition

"According to the World Health Organization, hunger is the single gravest threat to the world's public health"
"The World Health Organization cites malnutrition as the greatest single threat to the world's public health"

Forgive me if this is not a contradiction, malnutrition is lack of nutrients as well as excess of nutrients, starvation is not. CJ ^{Drop me a line! • Contribs} 21:14, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Starvation is included in malnutrition so when starvation is a problem so is malnutrition. Then when you add the excess of nutrients it makes malnutrition the greatest (or largest) threat. They consider hunger the gravest (or most serious) threat, probably because it's harder to find nutrients for those who don't have them then to cut excess nutrients for those with which this is a problem. I don't think it's a contradiction. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.255.123.214 (talk) 14:05, 29 December 2011 (UTC) @Cj005257 , thanks for reporting this, I changed the sentence in Malnutrition to say "The World Health Organization have reported hunger and related malnutrition as the greatest single threat to the world's public health." This is more consistent with the source than the original sentence, and expressed in this way, there is no contraction. FeydHuxtable (talk) 08:59, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Being walled in

The article states "From the beginning of civilization to the Middle Ages, people were immured, or walled in, and would die for want of food." Really? They'd die of dehydration long before starvation became an option. and if the walling in was airtight, you could factor in asphyxiation. But 99 times out of 100, dehydration would kill you first. Peter Greenwell (talk) 02:55, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Weight loss strategy

How about its function to lose weight? 129.180.1.214 (talk) 11:44, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

That's fasting, not starvation. Comment997242902 (talk) 02:39, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

File:Starved Vietnamese man, 1966.JPEG to appear as POTD soon

Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Starved Vietnamese man, 1966.JPEG will be appearing as picture of the day on May 29, 2016. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2016-05-29. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 00:34, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Picture of the day

The effects of a month of forced starvation on a North Vietnamese defector who was recaptured by the Viet Cong. Individuals experiencing starvation lose substantial fat (adipose tissue) and muscle mass as the body breaks down these tissues for energy. Vitamin deficiency is another common result of starvation, often leading to anemia, beriberi, pellagra, and scurvy. The energy deficiency inherent in starvation causes fatigue and renders the victim more apathetic over time. Atrophy of the stomach weakens the perception of hunger, and victims of starvation are often unable to sense thirst.Photograph: United States Information Agency; restoration: Chris Woodrich

Unencyclopedic style concerning kwashiorkor in the intro

The bloated stomach, as seen in the adjacent picture, represents a form of malnutrition called kwashiorkor which is caused by insufficient protein despite a sufficient caloric intake.[5] Better medicine will prevent the pictured symptoms in which included is weight loss and muscle wasting from further taking form.[5]
This entire passage seems unencyclopedic to me, especially the second sentence - it makes no sense to mention what better medicine will amount to as regards to the symptoms of this particular condition, at least, not in the intro. Can it be moved somewhere else in the article? Currently, it strikes me as a relic from an older era of Wikipedia, or as a passage from some propaganda brochure to end world hunger.--Adûnâi (talk) 21:10, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Years ago it was asserted that parasites like worms in the water caused the bloated belly. But it was poorly researched, and was inconsistent with the facts that older people drinking the same water didn't get it. It seems some of the words for the bloated stomach are translated as "new baby syndrome". The old baby is taken off milk so the new baby can nurse. The old baby is fed high sugar foods to quell the pains of hunger. This is what causes some cases of bloated belly. 98.164.76.40 (talk) 00:03, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

What is caloric energy?

Thermal energy? Is there also Joulic energy? Is kinetic or potential energy also caloric energy? Darsie42 (talk) 15:07, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

Contradiction on fat reserves

The following text in the "Biochemistry" section is self-contradictory and unclear:

Starvation ensues when the fat reserves are completely exhausted and protein is the only fuel source available to the body. Thus, after periods of starvation, the loss of body protein affects the function of important organs, and death results, even if there are still fat reserves left unused.

How does death from starvation ensue "even if there are still fat reserves left unused" when starvation only ensues "when the fat reserves are completely exhausted"? One or the other statement needs to be modified and reconciled. If this intends to mean death can ensue (perhaps during a subsequent malnourishment event) after starvation is interrupted and fat reserves are re-established, then this needs to be clarified because that's not the clear meaning conveyed. Comment997242902 (talk) 02:34, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

How do you translate "Starvation ensues when the fat reserves are completely exhausted" into "starvation only ensues "when the fat reserves are completely exhausted"

Suicide by Starvation (Content Warning: Mention of Suicide)

If one were to use Starvation as a suicide method (Starvation in the sense of only consuming water), how long would they last before cessation of body function? Also, what are the stages of Starvation leading up to death, and how does Starvation affect the body?

Context: I am writing a paper on suicide methods throughout history and the way they kill. They include starvation, dehydration, self-immolation, and a few others. 2600:6C44:237F:E5C1:855:9758:ECAD:F232 (talk) 05:06, 13 January 2024 (UTC)