I was trying to look this up earlier and could not easily find reliable information on the internet, mostly due to a new popular claim that 7 million people starved to death in the Great Depression! Otherwise, for the most part, what I could find were claims that no one starved to death, which are mostly predicated on the idea that all the deaths that seem like starvation are really severe malnutrition. According to the UN, malnutrition is still the leading cause of death in the world today. In the US, tens of thousands were dying during the years of the Depression from pellegra, which was cured in 1938 through niacin supplementation. This is known because there were Pellegra hospitals and it was believed to be an infectious disease so there are good records.
New York, which was 10% of the US population, was experiencing death by starvation and would keep track much better than most places, such as Appalachia or Oklahoma, where I would think it would be much, much worse before the New Deal programs started. There is evidence that many government agencies conducted studies on malnutrition levels, but at the time they did not have an established definition or complete understanding of the symptoms of malnutrition would be or even what foods a person must eat to not die. Source: this and this
So, I would be very interested to know how many people died of malnutrition or lack of calories, if any estimate is possible.
Since it is already demonstrable false to me, it isn't necessary to disprove the claims in the Pravda article.