Using Household Consumption Data to Flag Low Nutrient Access.

Background: Information on food consumption, dietary diversity, and nutrient inadequacies are key for informing food security and nutrition programming. Household- and individual-level data together provide the most complete information, but individual dietary modules are not always feasible in humanitarian contexts due to cost and time constraints.

Objective: This article asks to what extent it is possible to use food consumption data which is commonly collected at household level through food security and vulnerability surveys, to assess the household's access to vitamin A and iron.

Measuring Poverty for Food Security Analysis: Consumption- Versus Asset-Based Approaches.

Background: Poverty and food insecurity are intrinsically linked as poor households often lack the resources required to access sufficient nutritious food to live an active and healthy life. Consumption and expenditure surveys are typically used to identify poor versus nonpoor households but are detailed and costly. Measures of wealth based on asset ownership and housing characteristics can be generated from lighter, less costly surveys.

What is the effect of physical activity level on food consumption, energy deficiency, and dietary diversity?

Background: Energy deficiency is observed to be at odds with other food security indicators. In wealthier urban areas, the prevalence of energy deficiency is often higher than in poorer rural areas, whereas other food security indicators, such as food diversity, perform much better in urban than in rural areas.

Objective: To investigate to what extent differences in physical activity levels influence dietary quantity and quality.

Integrating food poverty and minimum cost diet methods into a single framework: a case study using a Nepalese household expenditure survey.

Background: Current tools assessing affordability of nutritious diets are incomplete. "Food poverty" uses expenditure data to identify households unable to acquire a diet adequate in energy but does not consider other nutrients. The "minimum cost of a nutritious diet" method provides a threshold for purchasing a nutritious diet but must rely on other data to identify "nutrient-poor" households.