Poverty, which has been widespread in all societies throughout history, has always and often first and foremost been associated with food emergencies, i.e. acute or permanent hunger. The continuity of food shortages or the underlying unfair distribution of available resources has preoccupied people for centuries. Since the nineteenth century, the statistical age has seen the emergence of various sciences that, from different perspectives, have made food security in societies a core issue. At the same time, not everyone benefited from the expanded possibilities of food production: unequal distribution in times of spreading industrialization, on the one hand, and existentially threatening living conditions via two world wars in the first half of the twentieth century, on the other, left the vast majority of people feeling little of it.