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The relationship between food insecurity and dietary outcomes

An analysis conducted with nationally representative data from Kenya, Mexico, Samoa and the Sudan












Alvarez-Sanchez, C., Moltedo, A., Troubat, N., Manyani, T., Yassin, F., Kepple, A. and Cafiero, C. 2021. The relationship between food insecurity and dietary outcomes – An analysis conducted with nationally representative data from Kenya, Mexico, Samoa, and the Sudan. FAO Statistics Working Paper 21-25. Rome, FAO. 




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    Estimating the prevalence of nutrient inadequacy from household consumption and expenditure surveys 2022
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    Malnutrition is pervasive in both low- and middle-income countries. Yet, there is a scarcity of food intake data collected at the individual level to describe diets, determine the prevalence of inadequate nutrient consumption in populations, and shed light on how diets contribute to the malnutrition burden. In the absence of nationally representative individual-level food intake surveys, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, dietary data collected in household consumption and expenditure surveys (HCES) are being used as a second-best option to make inferences on the food and nutrient consumption of populations. This paper proposes an innovative approach to estimate variability in nutrient intake that uses food data collected in HCES to estimate the prevalence of nutrient inadequacy in a country. This method builds on the approach developed by FAO to estimate the indicator of inequality used in the Prevalence of Undernourishment used in the global monitoring of food insecurity.
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    FAO/Intake joint meeting report on Dietary Data Collection, Analysis and Use
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    Dietary data provide critical information to guide the design of evidence-based nutrition and agriculture policies and programmes. Such information is especially crucial in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). In addition to having the highest levels of undernutrition globally, these countries are now also seeing dramatic changes in dietary patterns, with diets shifting increasingly away from a “traditional diet”, towards a diet more heavily influenced by processed, packaged and energy-dense foods with little nutrient content. As a method for collecting data on what people eat, nationally representative, quantitative 24-hour dietary recall surveys are considered the gold standard, but they are expensive, time-consuming and require specialized technical expertise to carry out. Thus, despite the clear need for dietary data in LMICs, the number of such countries with nationwide dietary data available to guide the design of policies and programmes remains relatively low. This report provides a summary and highlights from a technical meeting on “Dietary Data Collection, Analysis and Use: Taking Stock of Country Experiences and Promising Practices in Low- and Middle-Income Countries”, jointly convened by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the Intake Center for Dietary Assessment, on December 11–13, 2019 at FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy. The meeting, which brought together experts from 20 LMICs across different regions of the world, aimed overall to promote South–South learning, cross-regional networking, and the sharing of experiences with national (or large-scale), government-led, government-owned, quantitative 24-hour dietary recall surveys in LMICs.
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    Food data collection in Household Consumption and Expenditure Surveys. Guidelines for low and middle income countries 2018
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    The measurement of food consumption and expenditure is a fundamental component of any analysis of poverty and food security, and hence the importance and timeliness of devoting attention to the topic cannot be overemphasized as the international development community confronts the challenges of monitoring progress in implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In 2014, the International Household Survey Network published a desk review of the reliability and relevance of survey questions as included in 100 household surveys from low- and middle-income countries. The report was presented in March 2014 at the forty-fifth session of the United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC), in a seminar organized by the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Food Security, Agricultural and Rural Statistics (IAEG-AG). The assessment painted a bleak picture in terms of heterogeneity in survey design and overall relevance and reliability of the data being collected. On the positive side, it pointed to many areas in which even marginal changes to survey and questionnaire design could lead to a significant increase in reliability and consequently, great improvements in measurement accuracy. The report, which sparked a lot of interest from development partners and UNSC member countries, prompted IAEG-AG to pursue this area of work with the ultimate objective of developing, validating, and promoting scalable standards for the measurement of food consumption in household surveys. The work started with an expert workshop that took place in Rome in November 2014. Successive versions of the guidelines were drafted and discussed at various IAEG-AG meetings, and in another expert workshop organized in November 2016 in Rome. The guidelines were put together by a joint FAO-World Bank team, with inputs and comments received from representatives of national statistical offices, international organizations, survey practitioners, academics, and experts in different disciplines (statistics, economics, nutrition, food security, and analysis). A list of the main contributors is included in the acknowledgment section. In December 2017 a draft of the guidelines was circulated to 148 National Statistical Offices from low- to high-income countries for comments. The document was revised following that consultation and submitted to UNSC, which endorsed it at its forty-ninth session in March 2018 (under item 3(j) of the agenda, agricultural and rural statistics. The version presented here reflects what was endorsed by the Commission, edited for language. The process received support from the Global Strategy for Agricultural and Rural Statistics. The document is intended to be a reference document for National Statistical Offices, survey practitioners, and national and international agencies designing household surveys that involve the collection of food consumption and expenditure data.

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