24 hours of hunger

Two Chinese artists will experience hunger for 24 hours on Wednesday, which is World Food Day, to highlight the importance of malnourishment as a global issue.

Initiated by the World Food Programme, the Hunger Experience event aims to raise public awareness of the 842 million people suffering long-term hunger and malnourishment worldwide.

The WFP is aiming to completely eliminate world hunger in a project it terms the Zero Hunger Challenge.

Brett Rierson, the WFP's country director for China, said eliminating hunger is a huge issue on which everyone can cooperate, and the 24-hour hunger challenge has been designed to involve creativity, with several artists taking place on Wednesday.

Gao Yu, a painter who will take part in the event, will not eat for 24 hours while painting on the issue of hunger at the 798 arts zone.

According to WFP, the world's largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger, one in eight people do not get enough food to be healthy and lead an active life. Hunger and malnutrition are the number one risk to health worldwide — greater than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.