Washington, D.C. (AHN) – More people are going hungry in the United States with 49 million Americans, or 14.6 percent of the population, having trouble getting enough to eat.

In addition, some 5.7 percent of Americans experienced such high food insecurity that they either reduced the amount of food they ate or disrupted their eating patterns, according to a new report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The report was troubling because while much of the developing world experiences high rates of food insecurity, most of the developed world has had lower rates of hunger.

But the United States is not alone in seeing higher numbers of people going hungry, the number climbed to 1.02 billion worldwide, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. And although the Philippines has become one of the most developed countries in Asia, it is among the nations at risk of experiencing a growing problem of food insecurity.

According to projections from an assessment by the USDA’s Economic Research Services (ERS) earlier this year, the number of hungry people in Asia could grow by 13 percent if there were a decline in export growth and a cutback in net capital inflows. In that worst-case scenario, the number of hungry people in the Philippines could jump to 20 percent of the population, ERS officials said.

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