Food Insecurity

A population is defined as food-secure when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. Food insecurity, by contrast, is a state in which individuals or families have limited or uncertain ability to acquire, in a socially acceptable manner, nutritionally adequate and safe foods sufficient for an active and healthy life for all members of the household. Although the subjective experience of hunger and the objective physiologic and anthropometric changes of malnutrition may follow from food insecurity, these findings are not required for an individual or family to be considered food-insecure. Rather, food insecurity can stem from difficulties with any of three general aspects of food security: availability, access, or utilization. For people to be considered food-secure, the quantity of food available to them must be adequate to meet their caloric….