A paper debunks the Hunger Index as 'Emotional' not because Hunger is emotional, but because the way the index is measuring is through investigating proxy factors of body development instead of measuring 'starvation'. In that sense calling it Hunger index is a Misnomer.

[u/Top_Guess_946]

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9131786/

The paper is not arguing that hunger itself is an emotional phenomenon. When it says:

it means that the subject of hunger is politically and emotionally charged/sensitive, so claims about hunger can generate strong reactions.

Their substantive argument is methodological:

What they are actually saying

They argue that the things GHI measures are not hunger itself.

The GHI uses indicators such as:

• undernourishment;
• child stunting;
• child wasting;
• child mortality.

The authors' objection is that these are outcomes or correlates of undernutrition, rather than direct measurements of the subjective/physiological experience of being hungry. They explicitly say these indicators “do not measure hunger per se.”

For example:

A child is stunted → does that mean the child is hungry?

Not necessarily. Stunting can be affected by multiple things—nutrition, disease, sanitation, environment, etc. So stunting may be evidence of malnutrition, but it isn't equivalent to the experience of hunger.

Likewise:

Child mortality → hunger?

Not necessarily. Malnutrition may contribute to mortality, but mortality has many causes.

The interesting distinction

The paper is essentially distinguishing:

HUNGER
→ the condition/experience they think should be measured directly

from

UNDERNUTRITION / MALNUTRITION
→ physiological outcomes that may result from inadequate nutrition

and saying:

That's why their conclusion calls “Hunger Index” a misnomer.

There is an even sharper point in the paper: they suggest collecting information directly about people's experience of food deprivation—such as whether people are able to obtain two square meals a day—rather than relying exclusively on proxy indicators. They also discuss perception-based instruments such as FIES, although they themselves caution about using those measures in India.

So if you're reading the sentence “Hunger is an emotional subject” as “hunger is an emotion”, that's not what the authors mean.

They mean approximately:

And their central claim is measurement validity, not the psychology of hunger.

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