Food security: beyond calories.

• Author: Simon, Jessica
• Position: Reclaiming Food Security - Book review

Reclaiming Food Security

Michael S. Carolan

(London: Routledge Publishers, 2013), 198 pages.

In this persuasive book, Michael Carolan argues that common understanding of the term food security is incorrect. Food insecurity is not confined to lower-income nations, and therefore should not be seen as a North-South problem. (1) To some extent, food security concerns access to an adequate quantity of calories. Carolan, however, shows that available calories are a misleading and overly narrow indicator to measure food security. Carolan upends the conventional definition of food security, showing that overindulgence is also damaging, both personally and socially. Rather than considering the number of available calories alone as an indicator, he advocates for the use of a group of indicators to create a more complete picture of food security. Simultaneously, Carolan invites discussion about growth, delivery, and consumption of food by creating international comparisons using easily understood proxy variables.

Carolan creates his own five-indicator index of food security, the Food and Human Security Index (FHSI). His reclaimed definition is based on the premise that in order to be food secure, countries must improve health and well-being, and work toward improving sustainability in food growth and provision. The index includes: life expectancy at birth and self-reported information about overall levels of satisfaction with one's life to measure overall well-being; per capita water footprint as a percentage of total renewable fresh water to measure sustainability; percentage of calories from oil, fat, and sugar to measure health; and supermarket concentration, to illustrate the extent to which small producers will be able to enter the market, and more generally, food access for the masses. Even for seemingly objective indicators, there are subjective implications. For example, Carolan explains how he determines the optimal number of calories because there is no single international measure for it. Cardan's FHSI offers surprising results. For example, Costa Rica scores highest on the FHSI, while the United States comes in fifty-fifth place. Thus, being the most affluent or having access to the most calories does not imply the highest level of food security.

Carolan acknowledges that traditionally used quantitative indicators, such as total calories per capita, are appealing by appearing scientific and objective. Food security, though, is a complex...