FAOSTAT: Food and Diet: Diversity (MDD-W, Minimum Dietary Diversity for Women)

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 Suite of Gender Indicators presents a set of indicators relevant to agrifood systems that are disaggregated by sex, with the aim of highlighting gender differences across agrifood systems. The initial set of indicators is based on those used in FAO’s 2023 Status of Women in Agrifood Systems (SWAFS) report and on the recommendations of an expert consultation held in December 2023, and covers key dimensions including economic participation, governance, agency, social norms, assets and services, education, health, and nutrition. Indicator selection was informed by expert judgment and by the availability of data with sufficient geographic and temporal coverage to enable meaningful comparisons across regions and over time. While most indicators are produced and published by FAO and other international organizations, the objective of this domain is to provide a one-stop shop for sex-disaggregated data on agrifood systems.

As the custodian agency of 22 SDG indicators, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is responsible for curating and refining the methodologies of these indicators, collecting data from national sources, ensuring their quality and compatibility with applicable standards and classifications, and disseminating data at global level. This FAOSTAT domain complements the global SDG database administered by the United Nations Statistical Division (UNSD), as well as FAO’s SDG indicators portal, by providing access to the available data for all SDG Indicators under FAO custodianship. While this metadata page provides summary information on all SDG indicators data disseminated through FAOSTAT, indicator-specific metadata can be accessed from the link on the right hand navigation column. This additional metadata file provides details on the methodology used to compile each indicators, their data sources and the contact information of the relevant FAO focal point. It includes the links to the official SDG Indicator metadata documents accessible from the UNSD global SDG database.SDG Indicators under FAO custodianship, consisting of 22 indicators and 66 series that fall under six goals: • Goal 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.• Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.• Goal 6: Clean water and sanitation: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.• Goal 12: Responsible consumption and production.• Goal 14: Life below water: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources.• Goal 15: Life on land: Sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation, halt biodiversity loss.

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.

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.