Nearly one billion people go to bed hungry every night, and two million children die from malnutrition every year.
Hunger kills more people than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.
I’m one of the lucky ones, living in a country where food is plentiful, with parents who could afford to feed their children and earning enough to feed myself as an adult.
I’ve never had to go without; there’s always been more than enough food on the table and the only time I’ve gone to sleep slightly hungry has been during a last minute bikini-body panic before a holiday.
If anything, my friends and I are more likely to complain about being “far too full” after dinner in a nice restaurant or a weekend of overindulgence.
Four years as a student at university dabbling in the Sainsbury’s Basics range was as close as I’d come to poverty, but for all our whingeing, anyone who can still afford to go out four nights a week drinking wine, vodka and Southern Comfort isn’t really that poor.
Naively, I thought I’d be able to manage the Below The Line challenge of five days on a fiver with relative ease - I’m not a big meat eater and things like soup, bread and eggs are quite cheap.
Many people I’ve told about the challenge have also responded with “oh that wouldn’t be too hard” before rattling off a list of what they’d buy for their five days.
They soon pipe down when I suggest they put their stomach where their mouth is.
As I’ve discovered, five days of plain pasta for dinner is very different when you’re living it from when you’re just thinking about it in theory.
My trip to the supermarket soon showed me it wasn’t going to be as simple as I’d envisioned, and I fell at the first hurdle when my maths skills let me down and I ended up being £1.50 over budget.
It was pretty humiliating having to stop in various aisles in the supermarket and try to tot up what I had in my basket.
I hoped no one was judging me for buying all value items, and I even used the scales in the vegetable aisle to try and work out how much my potatoes would cost - all a novelty to me.
My dad was scandalised at my overspend and tried to tell me this meant I was 300 per cent over budget; I think it’s clear where I get my mathmatical abilities from.
I dutifully donated the offending items (brocolli, cottage cheese and one baked potato) to the family fridge and contemplated my deplenished supplies.
I had four cans of value tomato soup (24p each), one tin of value spaghetti (23p), one tin of half-price baked beans (35p), three baked potatos, a packet of value rich tea biscuits (23p), one emergency banana (17p), a loaf of bread (80p) - I could have got cheaper but really wanted wholemeal, a decision I might soon regret - and half a dozen eggs from the local farm shop for 75p. I’ve got 33p left to treat myself with later in the week.
It’s really not a lot of food at all, and I couldn’t afford basics like butter, marmite, milk and cheese. I would have liked to get some vegetables but couldn’t stretch to any - maybe with my 33p I’ll be able to pick some up somewhere later on.
If you’re wondering why the challenge is set at £1 a day, it’s because the international Extreme Poverty Line was defined by the World Bank as $1.25 US dollars a day, in 2005. If you live on less than that every day, you’re recognised internationally as living in extreme poverty.
Converting this to the 2005 equivalent for the UK and adjusting for inflation, living below the Extreme Poverty Line today would be the equivalent of us living on £1 a day.
That’s just for food - imagine having to pay for shelter, transport, health, education and everything else using that £1.
Realising there are millions of people struggling with even less than £1 a day puts things into perspective, but I still felt very sorry for myself eating my one piece of dry bread for lunch yesterday.
Fortunately as it was press day I was quite busy and didn’t notice the hunger pangs until I got home and suddenly felt very dizzy.
Sadly all I had to look forward to for tea was a plain baked potato - but I have to confess I siphoned a bit of margarine from my parents’ fridge to make it bearable.
Of course if I really were living in poverty, there wouldn’t be a fridge full of food to dip into, but that’s probably one of the hardest things about this challenge - trying not to be tempted by all the delicious food that’s available in the kitchen.
I woke up this morning on day two feeling quite energetic, but I was pretty devastated that I had to forgo marmite on my egg and toast.
I’ve had a rich tea biscuit for my elevenses, and now I’m counting down the minutes until my value tomato soup for lunch.
Find out more about the challenge at www.livebelowtheline.com/
Follow me on Twitter @LutonNewsConnie to see how I get on.