Food Insecurity

  • Children's HealthWatch's primary outcome measure.
  • Measured by the US Household Food Security Scale.

What is Household Food Insecurity?

Food insecurity and hunger are conditions that result from constrained financial resources. Hunger can occur in many situations, including dieting and being too busy to eat. The food security measurement, however, is only concerned with hunger that results because a household does not have enough to eat.

USDA definitions for food security and food insecurity:

    Food Security: "Access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life. Food security includes a minimum: 1) the ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, and 2) an assured ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways (e.g., without resorting to emergency food supplies, scavenging, stealing, or other coping strategies)."

    Food Insecurity: "Limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways." Hunger: "The uneasy or painful sensation caused by a lack of food. The recurrent and involuntary lack of access to food. Hunger may produce malnutrition over time…. Hunger…is a potential, although not necessary, consequence of food insecurity."

Why Measure Food Security?

Food security is an important indication of how well a society is doing. For much of the 20th century a U.S. domestic policy aim has been to ameliorate hunger in the United States. Food security can be viewed as part of a continuum of health and well-being, with food insecurity, hunger and undernutrition representing one side of the continuum. Measuring food security, as well as income and poverty, provides another indicator of resources available to households.

What is the US Household Food Security Scale?

The 18-item US Household Food Security scale, devised by the USDA, measures food security at both the household and child level. Reponses result in one of the following categorizations:

  • Food secure-Household shows minimal evidence of food insecurity.

  • Food insecure without hunger-Food insecurity is evident in households' attempts to manage food situation, primarily affecting the quality of the diet of members in the household.

  • Food insecure with hunger-Food intake for adults in the household has been reduced to an extent that adults have repeatedly experienced the physical sensation of hunger.

  • Food insecure with severe hunger- Households with children have reduced the children's food intake to an extent that children have experienced the physical sensation of hunger. Also known as 'child food insecuirty.'

 

For more information go to http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FoodSecurity/