Define Determinants of Food Security - Public Nutrition?
We learnt above that there is also a qualitative aspect to food security, which compels the perception of food not only as a square meal or two but the exquisite balance of calories, proteins and micronutrients that enables women to stay healthy and bear healthy babies, toddlers to grow to their best potential, adolescent girls to grow up healthy, elderly to live quality healthy life and adult men and women to work to heir optimum productivity. A national balance sheet pointing to comfortable food stocks and adequacy in food grain production does not constitute food security and nutritional adequacy at the household or individual level. Though national granaries may be filled and markets stuffed with food, it does not follow that all people have adequate access to it. More than food production, food security is related to who consumes food and who has the purchasing power to buy it. It is also about what kind of food is eaten, when and by whom. It is about how the food is prepared, stored and administered with what level of knowledge. Equally, it is about how well a food is absorbed and what reinforcement it receives from the surrounding quality of health, hygiene, sanitation and the physical, as well as, cultural environment.
Food security essentially is the combined product of four factors:
- Food availability,
- Food access,
- Food utilization, and
- Vulnerability