Excerpt: Extreme poverty remains a daily reality for more than 1 billion people who subsist on less than $1 a day. Hunger and malnutrition are almost equally pervasive: more than 800 million people have too little to eat to meet their daily energy needs. For young children, the lack of food can be perilous since it retards their physical and mental development and threatens their very survival. More than a quarter of children under age 5 in developing countries are malnourished.