Definitions

Extensive research has led to the following definitions which are foundational to the new food security measurement paradigm:

Food security refers to assured access to enough food at all times for an active and healthy life. At a minimum, food security includes: the availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, and a guaranteed ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways (without resorting to emergency food supplies, scavenging or stealing, for example).

Food insecurity occurs whenever the availability of nutritionally adequate and safe food, or the ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways, is limited or uncertain.

Hunger is defined as the uneasy or painful sensation caused by a recurrent or involuntary lack of food and is a potential, although not necessary consequence of food insecurity. Over time, hunger may result in malnutrition.

For references and technical information related to food security measurement, see the USDA Economic Research Service's Food Security Briefing Room at: http://www.ers.usda.gov/briefing/FoodSecurity/.

 

Food Security Measurement: Concepts and Definitions

The USDA's Food Security Core Module (FSCM) is the first official household measure of food insecurity and hunger in the United States. It provides a consistent basis for comparing food insecurity and hunger prevalence over time and across different populations.

The FSCM is based on research showing that households typically adopt a series of coping strategies in response to food insecurity. The continuum of coping strategies begins with a household head experiencing anxiety about food insufficiency, leading to decisions to reduce the household's food budget by altering the quality or variety of food consumed by the family. As the situation worsens, adults in the household begin to experience hunger due to reduced food intake, and in the most severe circumstances, both children and adults experience hunger.

The FSCM consists of an 18-item survey instrument constructed as a scale measure. The items ask about the household's experiences of increasingly severe circumstances of food insufficiency and the behaviors undertaken in response to them during the 12-month period preceding the survey. The least severe items ask whether the household has worried about or experienced a situation where food was running out, and there was no money to buy more. The most severe items indicate reduced food intakes and hunger for children in the household or more severe hunger for adults.

Based on its response to all 18 questions, each household is classified into one of four food security status categories: 1) food secure, 2) food insecure without hunger, 3) food insecure with moderate hunger evident, and 4) food insecure with severe hunger evident.

For research efforts with time and/or financial constraints that make using the full scale difficult, an abbreviated 6-item scale has been developed by researchers at the National Center for Health Statistics. The 6-items are a subset of the full 18-item version and, like the full scale, capture a range of household responses to inadequate resources for food. However, the "short form" does not allow for the separation of the moderate and severe hunger categories because it is unable to distinguish between the most severe cases in which children are going hungry from those cases in which adults have cut their food consumption.