Hunger: overexposure

Appropriately enough, today, when I planned to start blogging seriously about the problem of hunger in the world, NPR's Morning Edition did a story on the retiring head of the UN's World Food Program (WFP).

The theme of the interview, it seems to me, is overexposure. Not of the American people; most really don't know all that much about world hunger. No, it's the people working on hunger who become overexposed. They lose one of two things: 1) their ability to be rational about the situation or 2) their ability to feel for the people they're trying to help. James Morris seems to have been fighting the second, but lost out to the lure of statistics. If I just throw enough statistics at it, people will come to grips with the fact that we have a problem, right?

The statistics are overwhelming. Except that the idea of 18,000 children dying is a little abstract for most Americans. We can understand the child next door dying of cancer, 3 children in a fire, the 13 people killed at Columbine. We can't really conceive of 18,000 children dying
every day. Most Americans, too, have never seen someone die of hunger, so they don't know what it entails. (Side note: the angriest I've ever been with an author was when I read that abortion was a more pressing legislative issue because all the children dying of hunger could hang on one day; after all, abortion is immediate and hunger is slow. This from a doctor.)

So, statistics don't really work because we don't understand them. What would? Americans are underexposed as far as world hunger. The people who know about it are overexposed. Suggestions?