Chapter 2


according to need, it does not give much information about the adequacy of the food supply
to meet needs under the existing income and asset distribution. In other words it does not
give information on actual access. /

Food Consumption Data taken from expenditure or budget data are a better measure of
potential access to food. However, they often are weak in their coverage of non-monetary
access to food, through social institutions and obligations or through subsistence production.
They may only cover some of the sources of food entitlement. The resulting figures have to
be compared to RNIs to assess adequacy. This may be a reasonable procedure if the food
consumption data are aggregated over the whole survey, or a significant subgroup of the
survey, but the more disaggregated the data, the more dubious a comparison with an RNI
figure based on average requirements. In other words, an individual household may consume
less food than average because it has more small children or elderly people, or the family is
genetically small in body weight, or it has lower requirements for other reasons. Equally a
household which appears to meet the average RNI for the country may be deficit because of
higher physical activity or the age composition of the household. Adjustments can be made
to take some of these factors into account, but potential error can still be high. If Lower RNIs
have been calculated (see section 1.4) then they can be used to identify with reasonable
certainty a minimum of families which are deficient in nutrient intake, but this will only
identify the worst off households. There will certainly be other deficient households which
will be above the minimum threshold but still heavily deficient.

Food Intake estimates, whether through recall or weighed intake, usually give a more
accurate estimate of actual food intake than food consumption data. However, they are
subject to the same problem of comparison with average standards or RNIs. Unless intake
figures are collected along with other socio-economic information, it can be difficult to
identify the sources of entitlement which determine the household's food intake. An
informed policy response has to be able to identify the underlying cause of any food security
problem.

Anthropometric Data give a clearer indication of problems of poor nutritional status. The
data are somewhat easier to interpret as to the existence of a problem, but do not indicate
whether nutrient or food deficiencies are the major cause. Unless the survey has been
carefully planned to assist policy formulation, there may be insufficient socio-economic data
collected along with the nutritional data to clarify the links with the food system.