Food Security in the U.S. and Worldwide: What the Data Tell Us About Hunger and Policy
Food security is a fundamental human need which the U.S. has long sought to protect, using a variety of programs guided by key metrics that reflect and contribute to international measurements and global actions. To address our national interest in domestic and global food security, C-FARE organized a series of three webinars on the topic: last November we had a deep dive into U.S. food security, then we addressed global food security in January, and this April webinar addresses the implications of how food and nutrition security measurement is evolving in the U.S. and globally.
The measurement of food and nutrition security has grown from an initial focus on adequate calories for energy balance, towards the experience of food insecurity in the sense of skipping meals or going to bed hungry due to lack of money to buy food, and now includes access to healthy diets in the sense of availability and affordability of sufficiently nutritious food. All three are inter-related and help governments address hunger, raise diet quality and improve health outcomes.
The webinar featured four speakers and participant engagement, as summarized below.
Will Masters - Measuring food security in the US and worldwide: An introduction
Food security measurement has a long history, guiding improvement in food systems over time. During a period of scarcity, stock runs low and food prices spike up. Food price crises trigger a wave of food insecurity and disruption, but even when prices are low many people may be food insecure.
The oldest measures of food security focus on calories for survival, as in the FAO’s “Prevalence of Undernourishment” metric introduced in the 1960s. That counts the number of hungry people in the world, based on each country’s total food consumption relative to estimated level of dietary energy requirements. Since the 1990s, the USDA and subsequently the FAO have used “Experience of Food Insecurity” scores for the number of people who went to bed hungry, skipped meals, ate less or fewer items, due to lack of money for usual foods. And since 2020, the FAO, IFAD, UNICF, WFP and WHO flagship annual reports on the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI 2020, 2021, 2022) use retail prices of locally available foods for a least-cost healthy diet. Methods and results launched in July 2022 at https://WorldBank.org/FoodPricesforNutrition, and on FAOSTAT.
Measuring affordability of healthy diets helps distinguish among causes and hence remedies for poor quality diets and malnutrition in each country. At some times and places, people consume low-quality, unhealthy diets because healthier foods have unusually high prices. In that case, the policy remedy is to invest in lowering the cost of production and distribution to have more low-priced items available in each food group, such as vegetables. In other situations, costs are similar to prices paid elsewhere, but people do not have enough money to buy a healthy diet. For those people, the policy remedy is investments that increase earnings or provide nutrition assistance. Finally, there are people who could obtain a healthy diet but consume unhealthy options instead for reasons other than price or income, such as time use for meal preparation or product formulation, marketing, taste and aspirations.
Globally, about 3 billion of the world’s 8 billion people now cannot afford to buy the ingredients for a healthy diet, which cost an average of $3.54 in 2020. Those people consume lower-cost foods instead, sometimes because healthy foods have unusually high prices, but more often because their household income is insufficient. Others could afford low-cost healthy items but consume higher-cost and often unhealthy items instead due to drivers of food choice such as meal preparation costs and dietary preferences. Measuring food access using new data on diet cost allows policymakers to isolate each possible cause of poor nutrition, and target policies more effectively to improve health outcomes.
Alisha Coleman-Jensen – Food Insecurity in the United States
Food security is defined as access at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members. When households experience food insecurity, they are unable, at some point during the year, to provide adequate food for one or more household members because of a lack of resources. (This definition is based on an annual basis to ensure that households are getting consistent access to food.) In some households, food security may be experienced differently across household members. If any household member is food insecure then the entire household is classified as food insecure. Such classification is important to accommodate for households that shield young children from food insecurity to the extent that they can. Very low food security is a more severe range of food insecurity and is defined as normal eating patterns of some household members were disrupted at times during the year and their food intake reduced because they could not afford enough food. Disrupted eating patterns means skipping meals or not having food an entire day.
The Current Population Survey-Food Security Supplement (CPS-FSS) is sponsored by ERS and conducted by the Census Bureau. From 2001 to 2021, food insecurity (including low and very low food security) fluctuated from approximately eleven percent, peaking at around fifteen percent from 2007 to 2011, and back down to 10.2 percent in 2021. Low food security is characterized by a reduction in food quality, while very low food security also includes not being able to access enough food.
Food security data is measured and monitored for multiple purposes. Food security data is used to assess and monitor well-being according to the Sustainable Development Goals and the Healthy People 2030 Objectives. Additionally, food security data is used to assess the effectiveness of policies and programs, as well as to understand determinants and outcomes of food security. Food security measurement modules are used in many data collections, including evaluations by the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service and other entities, as well as by independent researchers.
Parke Wilde – From Scarcity to Prosperity: Nutrition and Food Spending Goals and Constraints for Low-Income Americans
There is a long history of looking at how food prices are related to food healthfulness.
When using energy density (regarding how obesogenic a food is) as a function of price per 1000 kcal, the less expensive options for foods may be higher in energy density. Alternatively, depending on the definition of “healthy,” the pattern may not be so obviously pessimistic. For example, with sodium, there is no obvious pattern.
When the Thrifty Food Plan (TFP) was updated in 2021, it was the largest permanent increase in the SNAP benefit. When USDA researchers were tasked with updating the TFP, they found that when they used the inflation updated cost constraint that had been available for previous editions, it was not sufficient to have an adequate healthy diet. So, this led to increases in benefit for different demographic groups that came out to about 21 percent benefit increase on average.
The TFP works like this: if you want to choose a diet that for reasons of palatability and appeal, it must not be too different from current consumption but different enough to be affordable and to be healthy.
Results like this illustrate the challenge that the USDA faced as it implemented the TFP. The distance function on the vertical axis shows how different the model diet is from current consumption. For example, the higher a point is on the graph, the less desirable it is.
It is really inexpensive to find food that provides enough calories. Getting enough energy and enough nutrients is an intermediate amount of expensive. On the other hand, it is difficult to find an affordable diet that allows people to get enough nutrients and to have food that meets expectations for what food groups do we get our food.
Lisa Moon – Addressing Food Insecurity Globally through the Food Banking Model
The food bank model food insecurity data to address challenges of food access through food recovery---bringing together surplus with need.
Food banks in high income countries have existed for more than 50 years. Over the past 30 years, there has been more interest in this model at the community level and in many places around the world. The Global FoodBanking Network (GFN) looks at expanding the model to emerging markets. There are 47 partner countries, 54 food banks and networks, and 778 community food banks active within the GFN.
The food bank model is unique because it is adaptable to the environment that it is implemented in. The model is very focused on surplus recovery in developing and emerging markets. Foodbank models in such markets generally function without government aid.
Food banks prioritize healthy food, nutrition education, and culturally appropriate food choices. GFN’s focus has traditionally been on food insecure populations, and primary services have been around accessing healthy foods. GFN ‘s members are increasing access to healthy foods through agricultural recovery programs that source fresh, local produce from farms. Additionally, on-staff nutritionists advise and implement nutrition policies and programs, and nutrition education programs include workshops and cooking classes. As well, infrastructure investments, like cold storage, make it possible to recover and store more fresh foods, while food safety standards guide food banks’ operations. Finally, school meal programs for children provide consistent access to food during critical stages of growth and development.
Since 2019, FGN has supported food bank establishment or expansion of school feeding programs in 17 countries, with the total growing to 36 countries FY22. These programs serve 26,000 children from low-income families throughout the school year with daily meals.
Food insecurity can be caused by lower incomes and rising prices of food, and it has been necessary for food banks to change their models to effectively serve food insecure communities. Generally, food banks work at the intersection of food security, climate, and community resilience. Food bank investment is essential for both decarbonization and mitigation. Climate change disproportionately affects GFN communities. Additional policy that is fully cognizant of the intersection of the aforementioned factors is necessary to effectively address food insecurity.
This program is supported in part by the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association and the US Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service, and the National Agricultural Statistics Service.
Those who register but cannot attend our webinar can always view a recording of it later at the council’s YouTube channel.