Measuring hunger, food security and food consumption

Publications

02/08/2021

Little research has been conducted on the association of food insecurity, particularly at the moderate level, and dietary consumption in low- and middle-income countries. This study expands on previous works by considering cross-country comparable measures of food insecurity that are calibrated against the global Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES). The FAO Statistics Division has been publishing estimates of the prevalence of food insecurity, based on the FIES, since 2017.

08/04/2021

Producing, reporting, and interpreting vitamin A statistics present multiple challenges largely attributable to the systems of equivalence used to convert pro-vitamin A carotenoids into retinol equivalents, and to the criteria used by institutions to set recommendations.

05/03/2021

In many countries, statistics from household consumption and expenditure surveys are increasingly being used to inform policies and programs. In household surveys, foods are typically reported as they are acquired (the majority are raw).

01/01/2018

This document describes the updates introduced in ADePT-FSM version 3 to improve its capacity for nutritional analysis by adding new indicators and refining methodologies. It also describes how to optimize the use of other indicators, produced already by ADePT-FSM version 2, for an enhanced nutritional analysis.

13/09/2017

Surveys focused on food acquisition collect higher food quantities compared to those that target food consumption. Surveys based on recall interviews collect higher food quantities compared to those based on diaries, but the difference decreases with long reference periods.

31/08/2017

This article focuses on the use of Household Consumption and Expenditure Surveys (HCES) as a source of data to inform food security assessments. We argue that the quality and characteristics of food consumption data collected in HCES may limit the reliability of food security assessments, as parameters estimated from survey data may be biased due to systematic flaws in the collection of food data.

01/01/2014

The stand-alone software, ADePT-Food Security Module (available for free downloading), was developed to produce food security indicators from food consumption data collected in household surveys. These indicators, derived at the national and subnational levels, include the consumption of calories and macronutrients, the availability of micronutrients and amino acids, the distribution of calories and the proportion of people undernourished.