What is the purpose of this pedantry? Plenty of children do not get the appropriate nutrition during the day due to food insecurity, and for many the only consistent meal they get is at school. Why argue over technical definitions of starvation?
What is the purpose of using a word that means something different than what is currently being discussed? Why not say that children are suffering from malnutrition or food insecurity, rather than using a term used to describe a cause of death?
You wouldn't say that someone who choked on a glass of water to have drowned, or someone who received a momentary shock from frayed cord to have been electrocuted.
Words have meaning, it's not pedantic to comment on the usage of a word that has a different meaning entirely from manner in which it is being used, in what I suspect is an attempt at an appeal to emotion.
I think most (all?) people would understand "starve" to mean to suffer from hunger, rather than to literally die from hunger. Especially from the context.
One would think that the actual dictionary definition of a word, rather than hyperbole, would be the most widely (all?) accepted and understood meaning of a word. Being defined, in a dictionary, and all.
What is the outcome of a flame starved of oxygen? A plant starved of light? A person starved of food?
The devil doesn't need an advocate here.