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But don't you in the West call it paleo diet with intermittent fasting? Double standards. To you that is healthy, for us it is going hungry.

Going to the garden is a daily chore in the village, just like you going to work daily. Obviously people need to stock up supplies , so holding them in a workshop for 2 days or more means their rations are low, so they need to be excused. Life in rural areas is gender specific. So when a person takes leave does not mean they are hungry. There is a family depending on that person to bring in the food. So you have to be sensitive to village systems before locking them up in trainings.

Maybe they didn't see anyone who was so fat and obese like they have back in their country, when they conducted the survey in Western Province. So they assume the whole of PNG is a hungry country...!!

This is an excerpt from a study I did at Rangwe village, Nuku district, West Sepik Province in 2007: From 1 July to 1 October 2007, forty-two households were visited three days a week, usually in the evening, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and asked what foods they had consumed on the days since the last visit. The time of the day also influenced what was eaten. Of the 2658 meals which included sago, 47% were evening meals and only 18% mid-day meals. Bananas and pawpaw were eaten more often at mid-day meals than other meals and sago and greens were eaten less often at mid-day meals than in other meals. It was initially thought that the 742 mealtimes at which a household reported they had consumed no food, might indicate which households were short of food. But 77% or 577 out of a total the 742 meal times at which it was reported that no food was consumed, were at mid-day, when people are usually working away from their village homes. In these circumstances they often either do not eat, or more commonly, they snack on sugarcane or a pawpaw and do not count this as a meal. In over three-and-a-half months, at only nine evening meal times did a household report they had not eaten anything and had ‘gone to bed hungry’. While this suggests there is not a shortage of food at Rangwe, I examine which households reported missing a meal below. The nine households which reported missing evening meals were Households 1 (three times), 10, 20, 25, 29, 51, and 55. They were all above the median for the number of mature sago palms available in 2016 and 1 and 55 were in the first quartile. So, unless their circumstances had changed significantly between 2007 and 2016, the reasons why they missed an evening meal would appear to not include a shortage of available sago palms. Households 1 and 55 are in Quartile 1 (sago-rich), 10, 25, 29 and 51 are Quartile 2 (sago-adequate) and 20 is Quartile 3 (sago-inadequate). The head of Household 1 experiences occasional bouts of a psychological condition, causing him to act in an unusual way. This may have temporarily affected family wellbeing, causing dinner meals to be skipped. The head of household 25 was still mourning the death of his wife and this may have contributed to him and his children skipping meals. Other circumstances may have contributed to households 10, 20, 29, 51 and 55 who reported not eating dinner meals. It is likely that some households may have had a heavy meal at sago processing facility or garden camp site before returning home, to go to bed without eating an additional evening meal.

What significance has the criterion of skipping meals at least once a year? This just asks for unusual events (a long bush trek, hunting or fishing expedition for instance) to sway the results. Also, you do not seem to be worried about "miraculous" convergence of responses between rural and urban environments that are markedly different in all respects, and yet they yield the same answers. This could point to your questions probing human psychology rather than actual environmental conditions. For instance, how different would be the answers from arguably well fed Queensland?

Agree with what you said. In the rural areas no work, no food or might put it this way, out of thy sweat he shall eat, lazy people should not eat.

In my country eating meal 3x per day is not our custom, we eat whenever we feel like. Those who says they don't eat could be those living in towns or urban drift but mostly in Papua New Guinea we own lands to grow our own food enough for the consumption ... it shouldn't be a PNG hungry country. I am employed in formal sector, I don't spend most of my income on importing good only a bit and most food comes from my backyard garden or market.

This report is totally full of crap!!!... Whoever did the survey doesn't understand the PNG lifestyle. For your information, we in the rural Highlands can eat in bowl dishes... plates are very tiny compared to the size and amount of food that will be served.

Population is growing rapidly in PNG. Birth spacing is decreasing. Pressure on land is increasing. These factors, among others, increase the likelihood that nutritional needs may not be met for many people. There is certainly a need to monitor the well-being of people with respect to nutrition. But surveys of this kind must be done well or their results will be unreliable. As Bryant stressed, the survey questions listed in PNG Demographic and Health Survey could not, as posed, answer questions about hunger in PNG. I think I myself could answer ‘yes’ or ‘probably yes’ to all of them! To accept one person’s response that they had gone without food for one whole day in a full year as evidence that that person’s household experienced hunger is seriously wrong. For 30 years I have been visiting people in the Nomad area of Western Province. A major component of past initiation practices was the requirement that novitiates went without certain things – tobacco, water, certain foods – for hours, a few days or (with some foods) until the time they married. They were being taught that, in the boom-bust environment where they lived, short-falls were to be expected and they had better learn how to live in this kind of a world. In the year of their initiation all these strong and healthy youths and young men could have answered ‘yes’ to all the survey questions. Russ Stephenson has been working on issues of malnutrition in this region, though Covid-19 has postponed follow-up surveys. He is rightly concerned by observations of a high level of malnutrition in children though the possibility of lingering effects from a serious drought and earthquake need to be untangled. There will be people in PNG for whom adequate nutrition is problematic. It is important to learn where, and for whom, problems exist. Regrettably, I do not think the survey summarized in this article addresses either of these needs in ways that would be wise to act upon.

Thank you everyone for the comments. In response to a few of the specific queries: 1. The questionnaire wasn’t translated, but the interviews were trained and they translated as needed as they asked the questions. 2. Our understanding is that “whole day” was intended to be 24 hours. 3. If the respondent said yes to not eating for a whole day, it was at least once in the last year. (The survey though was carried out in different parts of the country over three years.) 4. The survey doesn’t assume that people have or are meant to have three meals a day. 5. That’s a very interesting point about eating (or not eating) “real food”. 6. It is certainly true that individual survey questions might get interpreted in different ways, and in unintended ways. However, the eight questions give fairly consistent answers. And three other surveys show widespread calorific deficiencies. Just some more background on the survey: We should have mentioned that it was implemented in PNG by PNG’s National Statistical Office. The DHS itself is an international survey. These questions on food security were developed by the FAO and have been used in a large number of countries, both developed and developing. Although we didn’t report it, typically an index of food security is created based on all the questions. The PNG DHS report does this and calculates that 57% of the population of PNG experiences moderate to severe food insecurity. This is actually the average for Sub-Saharan Africa (see Table 3 of <a href="https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/WFP-0000117811/download/?_ga=2.221294424.1367782373.1621508675-834003342.1621508675" rel="nofollow ugc">this report</a>). The PNG report (which you can access <a href="https://www.dhsprogram.com/publications/publication-fr364-dhs-final-reports.cfm" rel="nofollow ugc">here</a>) also finds that the poor in PNG are more likely to experience food insecurity than the rich. Stephen and Manoj

Report is crap ... please understand our lifesty and the the variety of crops and what we see as a norm in our daily lives before coming up with your so called report. Also taking into consideration the level of literacy because if you just ask someone if they had eaten during the day, they say no even if they had eaten a cucumber or a mango.

There was a comment about enough food but not enough nutrition. I would suggest this is also seen in urban areas where diets have poor choices with sugary or processed products like white rice. Rice is a significant staple here but it’s polished (white) with all the balancing nutrients removed. Your body is only temporarily happy then it asks for more food to find the nutrients it needs. But more processed food continues the deficit. Which is why you see people growing larger and unhealthier. Village food may be simple but it does have better nutrient mix.