Food-poverty status and food insecurity in rural West Lombok based on mothers' food expenditure equivalency.

Background: When the Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS) developed a national food-poverty line for Indonesia, some aspects, such as food availability,food beliefs, and food habits, were not considered. In addition, the reference population was determined on the basis of their nonfood expenditures.

Objective: To develop and use a method applicable in any given sociocultural setting, as well as to determine food-poverty status in rural West Lombok, Indonesia, using mothers'food expenditure equivalency (FEE).

Method: Mothers' actual food intake determined by a modified 24-hour recall served to establish FEE. The results were verified with household food-security measures based on the US Household Food Security/Hunger Measurement (US HFSSM), and the mothers' nutritional status was assessed by the body-mass index (BMI).

Results: Most mothers (72%) were food-poor and 79% were also food-insecure. Food poverty has a positive correlation with household food insecurity. The severely food poor also had the highest risk of household food insecurity. The nutritional status of mothers showed no correlation with food-poverty status and therefore was not found to be an appropriate indicator of food poverty in this cultural setting.

Conclusions: Because most food consumed by mothers was purchased, financial security plays a key role in determining family food sufficiency, in terms of both quantity and variety. Mothers' BMI status differed between the food-poor and non-food-poor groups, but the difference was not statistically significant, suggesting that in our setting the food-poverty line cannot be used to identify physiological need but is rather more of a social and economic indicator. We suggest the use of US HFSSM questionnaires as a simple alternative means to assess both food-poverty and food-security status, mainly because the method is simple to apply and corroborates our findings using area-specific FEEs. Finally, our study results suggest a number of follow-up investigations.