Domestic Food Insecurity

Household food insecurity is the problem that some families and individuals experience while obtaining enough food to maintain good health. This experience is often described by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as being uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet basic needs for all household members because they had insufficient money and other resources for food. When food insecurity status is measured, an adult in the household is asked about his or her past year’s experiences buying enough nutritionally adequate food to feed the household all the days of the year. The rate of food insecurity (usually from 11% to 15% annually) indicates a sizable minority of American adults who at some point in the prior 12 months struggled to ...