Availability of different food items by residence

67 FOOD SECURITY Table 7.8: Average number of days of food consumption per week, by residence, and by selected food items Food item Residence Urban Rural Kuchi National Cereals 7.0 7.0 7.0 7.0 Tubers 2.9 2.6 2.2 2.6 Meat and ish 3.3 2.3 1.7 2.5 Pulses 2.1 1.6 1.5 1.8 Dairy 3.2 3.4 4.3 3.4 Oil and fats 6.7 6.5 6.7 6.5 Vegetables 2.8 1.7 1.8 2.0 Fruits 3.2 1.8 1.1 2.1 Nuts 0.4 0.3 0.0 0.3 Sugar 6.7 5.9 5.9 6.1

7.8.2 Food Consumption Score

Food consumption can be measured based on the food consumption score FCS 5 which is normally used as a proxy to measure food security when quantitative data on calorie intake is not available. As described earlier, since the NRVA 2011-12 provides suficient quantitative data on calorie intake, the food security level in this report is determined based on the caloric quantity consumed per person per day against the recommended daily calorie requirement. However, in order to strengthen the calorie intake analysis and conirm the relevance of alternative uses of the FCS in rotating years of the NRVA in the future, the relationship between caloric intake and FCS is explored. As such, calorie intake is cross-tabulated with the FCS. Findings show a clear relationship between FCS and caloric intake. In all urban, rural and Kuchi populations, the proportion of households with acceptable food consumption score consistently increased with better caloric intake. Overall, the percentage of households with adequate caloric intake accounts for 65 percent among households with an acceptable food consumption score, while it is much lower 36 percent among those with a poor food consumption score. In urban areas, 57 percent of the households with adequate caloric intake are found among those with acceptable food consumption score, while this proportion is only 20 percent among those with poor food consumption score. A similar pattern is found for the rural and the Kuchi populations, where 68 percent of the rural households and 64 percent of the Kuchi households with acceptable food consumption also have adequate caloric intake – much higher than among those with poor food consumption score Figure 7.4. 5 The Food Consumption Score FCS is an acceptable proxy indicator to measure caloric intake and diet quality at household level, giving an indication of food security status of the household if combined with other household access indicators. It is a composite score based on dietary diversity, food frequency, and relative nutritional importance of different food groups. The FCS is calculated based on the past 7-day food consumption recall for the household and classiied into three categories: poor consumption FCS = 1.0 to ≤28; borderline FCS = 28.1 to ≤42; and acceptable consumption FCS = 42.0. The FCS is a weighted sum of food groups. The score for each food group is calculated by multiplying the number of days the commodity was consumed and its rela- tive weight.