1. FOOD SECURITY
Concepts, Basic Facts,
and Measurement Issues
June 26 to July 7, 2006
Dhaka, Bangladesh

2. Rao 6a:
Varieties of Measurement
for Food Security:
Classes + Sources
Learning: The session will introduce trainees to the
strategic choice of alternative indicators or measurements
of various dimensions and outcomes of FS or FIS based
on purposes, data and monitoring constraints, and need
for informational feedback to policy-makers.

3. Brief Contents
• measurement approaches
(economic, nutritional, anthropometric; secondary
data, surveys, qualitative or subjective approaches)
• relating measurement to policy purpose and data availability
• starting with the object of measurement, identifying
strengths and weaknesses of alternative measures
• classes of FS measures, and their uses, data demands and
ease of use: food access, dietary status, nutritional
status, food utilization, health status
• assessing options by their consistency and appropriateness
to different situations, demands of FS monitoring
entailed, underlying FIS causes, etc.

4. FS Concepts: A Reminder
• FS exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic
access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food
preferences for an active and healthy life. Household FS is the
application of this concept at the family level, with individuals
within HH as the focus of concern.
• FIS exists when people are undernourished as a result of the
physical unavailability of food, their lack of social or economic
access to adequate food, and/or inadequate food utilization.
• Food-insecure people have food intake below their minimum
calorie (energy) requirements, as well as those who exhibit
physical symptoms caused by energy and nutrient deficiencies. An
alternative view confines FIS to the consequence of inadequate
consumption of nutritious food, leaving the body’s utilization of
food as being within the domain of nutrition and health.
• Vulnerability refers to the full range of factors that place people
at risk of becoming food-insecure. The degree of vulnerability of
individuals, HH or groups of people is determined by their
exposure to the risk factors and their ability to cope with or
withstand stressful situations.

5. First- & Second-Order Concerns
• Note that FS is broadly defined as access to necessary
food for good performance and health. This first-order
definition, though important, does not fully capture all
aspects of food requirements.
• Second-order concerns based on measures of access and
use describe in more detail the food situation of the
population and of vulnerable segments of the population.
• Different measures of food security are required in order
to address these varied aspects of food security (in the
broad sense used here).
• There is no “magic bullet” or single measure that can
possibly capture these different aspects of food security

6. Measurement Approaches
• Alternative measures of FS exist with their own
strengths and weaknesses.
• Specific measures can be grouped broadly under
the following heads:
economic, nutritional, anthropometric; secondary
data, surveys, qualitative or subjective approaches
• Alternatives must be judged in terms of closeness
with which the (1) concepts involved are captured
as well as the (2) policy purpose at hand.
• In practice, (3) data availability and (4) the costs of
measurement also influence choice of measures.

7. Measurement Approaches (contd)
• The complexities of measuring FS arise from the
fact that FIS is a complex phenomenon. It is
attributable to a range of factors that vary in
importance across regions, countries and social
groups, as well as over time.
• The figure following illustrates this complexity
with reference to the determination of one key
aspect of FS i.e., nutritional status.

8. Framework for Understanding Nutritional status

9. Four Areas of Vulnerability
The factors appearing in the Figure can be
grouped in four clusters representing the
following four areas of potential vulnerability:
* the socio-economic and political environment;
* the performance of the food economy;
* care practices;
* health and sanitation.

10. Objects of Measurement
Any system can be measured in two ways:
• measurements can be made of the state of any part of
the system; or
• measurements can be made of flows through the
system.
Alternatively, indicators can be divided into
• indicators of process; and
• indicators of outcome.
The figure following contains a representation of the food
system, showing important objects of measurement –
both flow indicators and indicators of system states.

11. Food System Indicators

12. States and Flows
• Flow variables include size and distribution of
incomes, food supply as shown by food balance sheets, HH
food consumption and individual food intake.
• Stock or situation or state variables are national food
stocks, HH food stocks, HH conditions for food
preparation and storage, clinical signs of malnutrition
and anthropometric measurements.
 Some variables describe the macroeconomy, e.g., income distribution
& food supply, others relate to the household e.g., food stocks and
food consumption, and yet others are indicators of individual status
e.g., food intake and anthropometric measurements.
 Some give a direct picture of FS; others are more important for
analysing factors which modify food use and availability.

13. Food Categories
• Foods are traditionally categorised into eight groups:
- cereals (millet, sorghum, maize, wheat...)
- roots + tubers (manioc, yams, sweet potato, ...)
- sugar and honey
- fats ( butter, oil..)
- fruits and vegetables
- meat, offal, eggs and fish
- milk and milk products
- legumes (nuts, lentils, beans...)

14. Nutrients
• Nutrients constitute the active elements of foods
utilised in the body's functioning.
• They comprise
proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals
and trace elements.
• Foods contain some or all of these nutrients in
variable proportions.

15. Nutritional Requirements
• The expression nutritional requirements refers to the
quantity of energy and of nutrients, expressed on a daily
basis, necessary for a given category of individuals that
will allow these individuals, when in good health, to
develop and lead a normal life.
• Nutritional requirements have been established on the
basis of physiological studies (metabolic balances) and
field epidemiological studies.
• Requirements vary according to age, sex, body
weight, level of activity and physiological status
(e.g., pregnancy and lactation).
• They are expressed as averages, taking into account
individual variation.

16. Classes of FS Measures
• The basic classes of measures of food security are: food
availability, food access, dietary status, nutritional
status, food utilization, and health status
• These classes are progressively more difficult to define
and measure. Dietary & nutritional status can be measured
only with data on RNI and nutrient intake levels. Food
utilization requires other, more complex norms relating to
the environment in which food intake takes place, while
health status depends on factors other than food intake.
• The choice of class (or combination of classes) to be
measured will depend on the policy purpose and
consistency/accuracy desired as well as on data availability
and costs of data collection.

17. Classes … (contd.)
• Food availability can be measured in a number of ways:
the broadest is food adequacy for the population or for
particular segments of it. Does the nation, a segment
of the population or an individual household have
available a food supply that is adequate and in right
proportions to feed itself?
• Food access is the ability of HH or individuals to
acquire adequate quantities of available foods. National
availability may still leave segments of people unable to
access it due to low income, unavailability of certain
foods in particular regions or seasons, poor education
regarding nutrition/health, and many other factors.

18. Classes … (contd.)
• Dietary status is measured in a number of ways from
surveys or simple observation. Educational interventions
for FS are often in communicated in terms of diets.
Dietary recommendations are a rather simple way to
express deficiencies in food security and easy to
communicate in programs related to interventions.
• Nutritional status for households or individuals is
measured from household data adjusted for different
members (usually by energy requirements) and from
individual intake surveys. The idea is to get the food data
and transform it with the nutrient composition tables, and
develop estimates that are compared to the recommended
daily requirements or other measures or standards.

19. Classes … (contd.)
• Ordinarily, these comparisons use the recommended daily
requirements, but can as well be made within the sample
by investigating the tails of the distributions of daily or
usual daily intake.
• Food utilization is informally defined as the way the
human body makes use of nutrients in food.
Hygiene, sanitation, water quality, health care, food safety
and other environmental factors affect food utilization. In
a way this measure links health status and food security.
Utilization underscores the point that there are other
factors than food intake that determine whether or not the
population or segments of the population have “good’
nutritional status. Nutritional status is not all about food

20. Classes … (contd.)
• Health Status (often measured from health surveys)
relates to the longer term impacts of diet and other
factors on health. Measures used to determine health are
self reported, like days of sickness in a year, visits to
doctors, or directly measured like height and weight and
other anthropometric measures on surveyed respondents.
More intrusive anthropometric measures are illustrated
by such factors as assays from survey participant’s blood
and analyses to tissue measurements on arms or other
extremities of the body. Often the health surveys from
different countries have measurements that are specific
to known diseases in the nation.

21. Potential Data Bases
• Aggregate Production & Consumption Data for Major
Food Crops (food availability)
• Household Food Consumption Surveys (both availability
and diet composition at HH level; can be extended
to include individual food intake and inferences
about food utilization).
• Consumer Expenditure Surveys (give expenditure on
food and food types used for estimating CPI, also
contain information relating to FS: with sufficient
details on the food basket, can be used to estimate
diet and nutritional status)

22. Potential Data … (contd.)
• Individual Intake Surveys (food consumption among
sampled individuals: used to estimate usual daily
intake of foods and, with help of a food composition
table, to translate the food intake into nutritional
intake; these estimates are the closest available for
measuring usual daily intake of nutrients)
• Health Surveys (relevant to FS, contain
intake, anthropometric and self-reported data; self-
reported measures such as sickness can be linked to
dietary status & utilization; anthropometric
measurements can indicate long term

23. Potential Data … (contd.)
• Rapid Assessment Surveys (can be used in natural
disasters or other episodic events to assess
temporary food consumption, nutrition or
dietary status in approximate terms)
• Food Frequency Surveys (to infer dietary status and
food availability but can only be suggestive since
they lack sufficient experimental control)
• Nutrition Surveillance Surveys (to get rough
approximation of nutrition status)

24. Summary of Food Security Measures and Survey Data Sets Used to Estimate Them
Food Security Availability Access Dietary Nutrition Nutrition Health
Measure/ Status Status Utilization Status
Data Set
Aggregate
Production and X
Consumption
Household Food
X (within X
Consumption X X
Surveys household) (prorated)
Consumer
Expenditure X X X X
Surveys
Individual Intake
Surveys
X X X
Health Surveys X X X X
Rapid Assessment
Surveys
X X
Food Frequency
Surveys
X X X
Nutrition
Surveillance X X X X
Surveys
Special Food
Consumption X X X
Surveys

25. Assessing The Situation At Different
Levels Of Aggregation
• FBS gives aggregated picture of food flows in terms of
average calorie and protein availability at national level.
• Compared with RNIs, FBS can be used to assess supply
adequacy. But this does not tell us much about actual
access under the existing income and asset distribution.
• Food Consumption Data taken from expenditure or
budget data are a better measure of potential access to
food. These tend, however, to be weak on coverage of
non-monetary access to food, through social institutions
and obligations or through subsistence production. Also
an individual HH may consume less food than average
because it has more small children or elderly people, or
the family is genetically small in body weight.

26. Assessing The Situation At Different
Levels Of Aggregation (contd)
• Food Intake estimates give more accurate estimate of
actual food intake than food consumption data.
However, they are subject to the same problem of
comparison with average standards or RNIs.
• Anthropometric Data give a clearer indication of
problems of poor nutritional status. The data are
somewhat easier to interpret as to the existence of a
problem, but do not indicate whether nutrient or food
deficiencies are the major cause.