FAOSTAT: Cost and Affordability of a Healthy Diet: Cost and Affordability of a Healthy Diet (CoAHD)

The Suite of Food Security Indicators presents the core set of food security indicators. Following the recommendation of experts gathered in the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) Round Table on hunger measurement, hosted at FAO headquarters in September 2011, an initial set of indicators aiming to capture various aspects of food insecurity is presented here. The choice of the indicators has been informed by expert judgement and the availability of data with sufficient coverage to enable comparisons across regions and over time. Many of these indicators are produced and published elsewhere by FAO and other international organizations. They are reported here in a single database with the aim of building a wide food security information system. More indicators will be added to this set as more data will become available. Indicators are classified along the four dimensions of food security -- availability, access, utilization and stability.

The food and nutrient apparent consumption statistics were computed from Household Consumption and Expenditure Survey (HCES) data. HCES is an umbrella term for household-level surveys developed to inform economic policy, such as Household Budget Surveys, Household Income Expenditure Surveys, and Living Standard Measurement Surveys. These surveys collect information on household characteristics (e.g., region and urban-rural), household members characteristics (e.g., sex, age, education, food and non-food expenditures, etc.), and food quantities consumed and/or acquired during a reference period. Despite their limitations HCES have been used for producing food and nutrient apparent consumption estimates at national and subnational levels for the whole population.

The quantitative food consumption and nutrient intake statistics were computed by the Food and Nutrition Division (ESN) from representative individual quantitative dietary data available in the FAO/WHO GIFT platform (https://www.fao.org/gift-individual-food-consumption/en). The individual quantitative dietary data is collected through 24-hour recalls or food records, including detailed information on all foods and beverages actually consumed by individuals, at-home and away from home, in a reference period (usually the past 24 hours). Individual quantitative dietary data have the unique benefit to provide sex-age disaggregated detailed information to develop targeted agricultural-, nutrition- and food-related evidence-based policies and programs, food based dietary guidelines, food fortification programs and to study diet-disease associations. Individual quantitative dietary data are also essential for dietary exposure assessments in the area of food safety and have been used for a variety of other purposes such as estimating the environmental impact of diets and identifying less resource-intensive food consumption patterns.

The FAOSTAT monthly Food CPI and General CPI database was based on the ILO CPI data until December 2014. In 2014, IMF-ILO-FAO agreed to transfer global CPI data compilation from ILO to IMF. Upon agreement, CPIs for all items and its subcomponents originates from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the UN Statistics Division (UNSD) for countries not covered by the IMF. However, due to a limited time coverage from IMF and UNSD for a number of countries, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Central Bank of Western African States (BCEAO), Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB), UNdata, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the national statistics offices websites databases are used for filling the missing data of Food and General CPI. The FAO CPI dataset for all items (or General CPI) and the Food CPI, consists of a complete and consistent set of time series from January 2000 onwards. Data gaps on monthly Food CPI and General CPI are filled using statistical estimation procedures to have full data coverage for all countries for Food CPI and for General CPI. These indices measure the price change between the current and reference periods of the average basket of goods and services purchased by households. The General CPI is typically used to measure and monitor inflation, set monetary policy targets, index social benefits such as pensions and unemployment benefits, and to escalate thresholds and credits in the income tax systems and wages in public and private wage contracts. The FAOSTAT monthly Food CPI inflation rates are annual year-over-year inflation or percentage change over corresponding month of the previous year. The regional and subregional Food and General CPI, and the aggregated Food and General CPI at the different income levels (High-income economies, Low-income economies, Lower-middle-income economies and Upper-middle-income economies) are calculated using two different statistical methods: 1- A weighted average of Food and General CPI values of countries and territories within each region using the weights of Household final consumption expenditure (including non-profit institutions serving households) in 2015 in USD at constant prices of 2015. Household final consumption expenditure is available at https://unstats.un.org/unsd/snaama 2- Median of Food and General CPI values of countries and territories within each region. The Food CPI inflation rates for regional, subregional, and income groups are calculated by first computing, at the country level, the monthly percentage change between two consecutive years. These country-level inflation rates are then aggregated to the group level using two alternative methods: the median and the weighted average, whose weights are based on household final consumption expenditure at 2015 constant prices.

The Minimum Dietary Diversity for Women (MDD-W) statistics presented here were compiled by FAO's ESN Nutrition Assessment Team from various sources, including the Demographic and Health Survey Program (DHS), Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS), the World Bank's Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS), Comprehensive Food Security & Vulnerability Analysis (CFSVA), and retroactively computed from national surveys available in the FAO/WHO GIFT platform (https://www.fao.org/gift-individual-food-consumption/en). DHS, MICS, LSMS, CFSVA, and national surveys collect information on food consumption among women of reproductive age (15 to 49 years old) during the previous 24 hours. The characteristics of these surveys, particularly their sample size, allow reporting this data at a high level of disaggregation. The data reported here are therefore more disaggregated and complementary to the full MDD-W dataset presented in the FAOSTAT Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Indicators domain (https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/SDGB). The MDD-W indicator is also produced and published elsewhere by other international organizations and national governments. MDD-W statistics are reported here in a single database with the aim of building a comprehensive dietary data information system.

The dataset presents average daily per capita macro and micro nutrient availability by country and by FAO/WHO GIFT food groups (that are different from those used for the Food Balance Sheets), expressed in grams/milligrams/micrograms/kcal per capita per day. The population numbers used to calculate these statistics can be found in the Supply Utilization Accounts (SUA) dataset of FAOSTAT, as Total Population. Food availability quantities are derived from the SUA dataset. SUAs present a comprehensive picture of the pattern of a country's food supply and utilization during a specified reference period. The SUA shows for each food item - i.e. each primary commodity and a number of processed commodities potentially available for human consumption - the sources of supply and its utilization. The total quantity of foodstuffs produced in a country added to the total quantity imported and adjusted to any change in stocks that may have occurred since the beginning of the reference period gives the supply available during that period. On the utilization side a distinction is made between the quantities exported, fed to livestock, used for seed, put to manufacture for food use and non-food uses, losses during storage and transportation, and food supplies available for human consumption. The per capita supply of each such food item available for human consumption is then obtained by dividing the respective quantity by the related data on the population actually partaking of it.