"This manual is a guide for measuring food security using the food data collected as part of household expenditure surveys (HESs). While the main focus of these surveys has been on measuring households’ total monetary expenditures as a proxy for income, the surveys typically collect data on a variety of other aspects of people’s well-being as well, such as education, housing, and health. With respect specifically to food, data are collected on all foods acquired by households, including their food purchases, foods consumed from their own farms or gardens, and foods received in kind. Traditionally, data collection has been limited to the monetary value of these foods. However, as this manual demonstrates, accurate measurement of food security requires that data also be collected that allow estimation of the quantities of foods acquired by households. Estimated quantities, expressed in metric units, then serve as the basis for calculating a number of indicators of food security, including diet quantity, diet quality, and economic vulnerability to food insecurity. These indicators include:
• dietary energy availability per capita,
• percentage of people who are food energy deficient,
• diet diversity,
• percentage of dietary energy derived from staples,
• quantities of individual foods consumed per capita, and
• percentage of household expenditures devoted to food.
The primary objective of the manual is to inform HES data collectors and users how to collect the food data and use it to measure these indicators at the least possible additional cost."