This resource will deepen our understanding of the rapidly changing and increasing number of food and nutrition security terms. Here you will find background information with an emphasis on why terminology matters. There is also a table with terms and definitions. Initially the table will include terms used by the federally-funded food, nutrition, and health programs. Future updates will include terms used by other national organizations.
last update: 2022-12-30
AS PUBLIC HEALTH NUTRITIONISTS, we have long recognized the importance of nutrition and food security, promoting and connecting people to sources of nutrient-rich food for maintaining health.
The impact of the pandemic stressed the nation’s food systems, and induced a surge of food insecurity, with highest rates among Black, Indigenous, and Latino individuals. Access to healthful food everyday to ensure health and well-being became part of mainstream conversations which exposed the deep roots of systematic racism in our food systems, a leading cause of food insecurity.
New priorities, possibilities, and partners have emerged in a concerted effort to achieve food and nutrition security. As a result, many food and nutrition terms have surfaced or resurfaced to describe where we are and where we want to be. We offer this resource to help us understand one another while we work together to ensure equitable access to healthy, safe, and affordable food.
An agency’s or program’s description of a food or nutrition term provides context for their focus and goals, giving the public health nutritionist insight into roles to support them. For example, does the term description include “access” or “diet quality?” These descriptors require different approaches.
People’s lived experiences influence their understanding of terms. Nutritionists benefit from knowing a term’s origins, definitions or descriptions, and having awareness of how it is used to tailor their messages for clear communication to an audience. Word choice can carry influence (e.g., policy making and program funding), cause confusion (e.g., food security versus food sufficiency), or elicit an emotional response (e.g., “Swamp? I don’t live in a swamp!”).
Recent conversations with public health nutritionists working in or with food and nutrition programs revealed many lacked confidence to be able to accurately describe new and emerging food and nutrition terms’ meaning to a lay person. Terms such as food apartheid, food insufficiency, food justice, food sovereignty, and food swamp topped the list. Nutritionists requested a resource that could be used to build common understanding of terms with partners and within their programs.
What is a term? Merriam Webster defines term as “a word or expression that has a precise meaning in some uses or is peculiar to a science, art, profession, or subject.” Some federally-funded nutrition programs don’t consistently use the same definition for some terms, leading to confusion.
Food, food system, hunger and nutrition researchers, practitioners, advocates, and others create and modify terms to describe, study, and monitor past and current nutrition and public health conditions. Some are formulated through scientific research, some are adaptations of other terms used nationally and/or internationally to better align with an organization’s desired outcomes, and some are adapted to represent communities’ lived experience and observations.
Definitions or descriptions of concepts or terms (e.g., food apartheid, food insecurity, food desert) use similar key words and descriptors related to accessibility, affordability, diet quality, quantity, equity, safety, knowledge, ability, culturally appropriate, health, well-being, social determinants of health, and sustainability.
Some public health nutritionists use these terms in describing program goals and strategies, and are seeking ways to measure and show impact on food and nutrition security and progress toward food justice.
FOOD AND NUTRITION SECURITY TERMS | ||
|---|---|---|
| Term | Key Words | Definition/Description |
| Food and Nutrition Security | physical access to food; social access to food; economic access to food; safe food; sufficient quantity; sufficient quality; health equity; social determinants of health | Food and nutrition security means having reliable access to enough high-quality food to avoid hunger and stay healthy. Improving access to nutritious food supports overall health, reduces chronic diseases, and helps people avoid unnecessary health care. Source: HHS, CDC; Date accessed: 12-27-2022. |
| Food Insecurity | food insecurity; dietary quality and variety; quantity of food; uncertain availability (of food); limited, uncertain acquisition (of food) | Food insecurity is the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways. Food insecurity: Since the food security measure uses multiple items, it covers households worrying about food running out, dietary quality and variety, and quantity of food consumed. Food insecurity is measured at two levels of severity. In households with low food security, the hardships experienced are primarily reductions in dietary quality and variety. In households with very low food security, the hardships experienced are reduced food intake and skipped meals. Source: USDA-ERS; Date accessed: 09-13-2022. |
| Food Insecurity and Social Determinants of Health | food insecurity; low food security; very low food security; nutrition security; food and nutrition security; social determinants of health | Food insecurity is defined as a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food "that may be influenced by a number of factors, including income, employment, race/ethnicity, and disability." Low food security: Reports of reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet. Little or no indication of reduced food intake. Very low food security: Reports of multiple indications of disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake. Source: HHS, HP2030 and HHS, HP2030; Date accessed: 12-27-2022. |
| Food Insufficiency | food insufficiency; enough to eat; severity; very low food security | Food insufficiency means that households sometimes or often did not have enough to eat. Food insufficiency: The food insufficiency question provides relatively little detail on the food hardship experienced and indicates only whether a household had enough to eat. Food insufficiency is a more severe condition than food insecurity and measures whether a household generally has enough to eat. In this way, food insufficiency is closer in severity to very low food security than to overall food insecurity. Source: USDA-ERS; Date accessed: 09-13-2022. |
| Food Scarcity | food scarcity; food insufficiency | Percentage of adults in households where there was either sometimes or often not enough to eat in the last 7 days. Source: U.S. Census Bureau (Reference period is 7 days); Date accessed: 09-13-2022. |
| Food Security | Food Security; Food Insecurity; Equity | Access to affordable, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food for all people at all times. Source: GusNIP Training, Technical Assistance, Evaluation, and Information Center, Gretchen Swanson Center for Nutrition; Date accessed: 09-13-2022. |
| access; availability; nutritionally adequate; safe | Food security for a household means access by all members at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life. Food security includes at a minimum: The ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods; Assured ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways (that is, without resorting to emergency food supplies, scavenging, stealing, or other coping strategies). Source: USDA-ERS; Date accessed: 09-13-2022. | |
| Health equity | health disparities; social determinants of health; economic obstacles; injustices | Is the state in which everyone has a fair and just opportunity to attain their highest level of health. Achieving this requires focused and ongoing societal efforts to address historical and contemporary injustices; overcome economic, social, and other obstacles to health and healthcare; and eliminate preventable health disparities. Source: HHS, CDC; Date accessed: 09-13-2022. |
| High Food Security | no food access problems; no food access limitations | High food security (old label=Food security): no reported indications of food-access problems or limitations. Source: USDA-ERS; Date accessed: 09-13-2022. |
| Hunger | individual level; physiologic condition | Hunger is an individual-level physiological condition that may result from food insecurity. Source: USDA-ERS; Date accessed: 09-13-2022. |
| consequence of food insecurity; involuntary lack of food | The term hunger refers to a potential consequence of food insecurity. Hunger is discomfort, illness, weakness, or pain caused by prolonged, involuntary lack of food. Source: HHS, HP2030; Date accessed: 09-13-2022. | |
| Limited Access to Healthy Foods | food access; food availability; built environment; references USDA definition | Percent of population that is low-income (below 200% the Federal Poverty Level) and does not live close to a grocery store (more than 10 miles for rural and 1 mile for non-rural). Source: HHS, HRSA; Date accessed: 09-13-2022. |
| Low Food Security | reduced diet quality; reduced diet variety; reduced desirability of diet | Low food security (old label=Food insecurity without hunger): reports of reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet. Little or no indication of reduced food intake. Source: USDA-ERS; Date accessed: 09-13-2022. |
| Marginal Food Security | anxiety over food sufficiency or food in the house | Marginal food security (old label=Food security): one or two reported indications—typically of anxiety over food sufficiency or shortage of food in the house. Little or no indication of changes in diets or food intake. Source: USDA-ERS; Date accessed: 09-13-2022. |
| Nutrition Security | consistent and equitable access to food; consistent availability of food; affordability; equity | Consistent and equitable access to healthy, safe, and affordable foods that promote optimal health and wellbeing. Source: USDA-FNS; Date accessed: 09-13-2022. |
| Nutrition security means all Americans have consistent and equitable access to healthy, safe, affordable foods essential to optimal health and well-being. Our approach to tackling food and nutrition insecurity aims to: Recognize all Americans are not maintaining an active, healthy life that is consistent with Federal recommendations; and Emphasize taking an equity lens to our efforts. Source: USDA-FNS; Date accessed: 09-13-2022. | ||
| Very Low Food Security | disrupted eating patterns; very low food intake | Very low food security (old label=Food insecurity with hunger): reports of multiple indications of disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake. Source: USDA-ERS; Date accessed: 09-13-2022. |
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