For food insecurity refers to the difficulty in having access to sufficient quantities of healthy and nutritious food to lead an active and healthy life. In Italy, it is estimated that 5.5% of people are exposed to this condition more than 1 Italian in 100 suffers from moderate or severe food insecurity, especially in the South and among foreigners.
What is food insecurity
The FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) defines food insecurity as the condition in which a person cannot log indue to the unavailability of food and/or lack of resources to obtain it, to asufficiently nutritious diet to grow, develop normally and have an active and healthy life.
At an international level, the FIES scale (Food Insecurity Experience Scale), through 8 questions on the difficulties encountered in the last 12 months, due to lack of money or other resources:
- being worried about not having enough food to eat;
- not having been able to eat healthy and nutritious food;
- having eaten only certain types of food;
- having had to skip a meal;
- having eaten less than he thought he should;
- having run out of food;
- having been hungry and unable to eat;
- not having eaten for a whole day.
Based on the answers, people are classified into different severity levels of food insecurity:
- mild: there is no shortage of food, but it is of poor quality. This category includes people who, for example, give up buying fresh products to save money, focusing on cheaper and less balanced foods from a nutritional point of view.
- moderate: when you start to reduce the quantities too or to skip some meals due to lack of resources: the problem is no longer just the quality of what you eat, but also how much and with what regularity
- serious: FIES signals that detect the most severe food insecurity are having been hungry having not been able to eat And not having eaten for a whole day. When food is missing for a long time with meals skipped for days, there is in fact weight loss and direct consequences on health.
How many Italians suffer from it: the data
When we hear about food insecurity we often think of distant countries affected by famine or conflict. And in fact, according to FAO data, in 2024 the prevalence of moderate or severe insecurity globally it is equal to 28%. However, this percentage is an average between very different numbers based on geographical areas: from 58.9% of the African continent al 6.8% of the European continent.
In 2024 the 5.5% of Italians responded affirmatively to at least one of the questions on the FIES scale. The most widespread signal, with 4.3% incidence, concerns having eaten only certain types of food, followed by being worried about not having enough food to eat and not having been able to eat healthy and nutritious food, both equal to 2.5%.
THE’1.3% of the population is a moderate level or serious while FIES signals detecting the most severe food insecurity have an incidence of less than 1% (0.7% and 0.5%, respectively). Food insecurity moderate or severe it is higher in cities and metropolises (1.6%), while in rural areas or areas with low population density it is lower (0.9%). A territorial gap also emerges: in the South there is an incidence of moderate or severe insecurity equal to 2.7%, while Northern and Central Italy stop at 0.6% and 0.8% respectively and it is more widespread among foreign individuals (1.8%) than among individuals of Italian citizenship (1.3%). Those who present, for health reasons, limitations in usual activities (2.4%) compared to those without any limitations (1%) However, there are no significant differences between men and women, nor between adults and minors.
