The measurement of food consumption and expenditure is a fundamental component of any analysis of poverty and food security, and hence the importance and timeliness of devoting attention to the topic cannot be overemphasized as the international development community confronts the challenges of monitoring progress in implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In 2014, the International Household Survey Network published a desk review of the reliability and relevance of survey questions as included in 100 household surveys from low- and middle-income countries. The report was presented in March 2014 at the forty-fifth session of the United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC), in a seminar organized by the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Food Security, Agricultural and Rural Statistics (IAEG-AG). The assessment painted a bleak picture in terms of heterogeneity in survey design and overall relevance and reliability of the data being collected. On the positive side, it pointed to many areas in which even marginal changes to survey and questionnaire design could lead to a significant increase in reliability and consequently, great improvements in measurement accuracy. The report, which sparked a lot of interest from development partners and UNSC member countries, prompted IAEG-AG to pursue this area of work with the ultimate objective of developing, validating, and promoting scalable standards for the measurement of food consumption in household surveys. The work started with an expert workshop that took place in Rome in November 2014. Successive versions of the guidelines were drafted and discussed at various IAEG-AG meetings, and in another expert workshop organized in November 2016 in Rome. The guidelines were put together by a joint FAO-World Bank team, with inputs and comments received from representatives of national statistical offices, international organizations, survey practitioners, academics, and experts in different disciplines (statistics, economics, nutrition, food security, and analysis). A list of the main contributors is included in the acknowledgment section. In December 2017 a draft of the guidelines was circulated to 148 National Statistical Offices from low- to high-income countries for comments. The document was revised following that consultation and submitted to UNSC, which endorsed it at its forty-ninth session in March 2018 (under item 3(j) of the agenda, agricultural and rural statistics. The version presented here reflects what was endorsed by the Commission, edited for language. The process received support from the Global Strategy for Agricultural and Rural Statistics. The document is intended to be a reference document for National Statistical Offices, survey practitioners, and national and international agencies designing household surveys that involve the collection of food consumption and expenditure data.

Household consumption and expenditure surveys (HCES) are multipurpose surveys that are routinely conducted to collect data on household food consumption and availability in more than 120 countries. HCES are increasingly being used to calculate proxy estimates of food consumption, nutrient intakes, and nutrition status, often at the individual level. Rarely, however, do they collect information on meal participation, despite growing evidence that it is an increasingly important and variable component of the quantity of food consumed or available in a household. This paper explores the significance of adjusting for meal participation in making inferences about apparent food consumption and nutrient intakes. It focuses on two distinct sets of additional information requirements for enhancing the reliability and precision of measures of food consumption: (1) individual household members’ and household guests’ meal-eating behaviors, and (2) the number and apparent nutritional significance of meals. While the most comprehensive and precise accounting of intakes of individual food consumption and nutrients requires both types of information, the magnitude of the changes required in HCES questionnaires to capture them is likely to be prohibitive. Consequently, for many HCES, a “second best” approach may be the most effective method, at least in the short term. The paper empirically explores some of the relatively few HCES that currently attempt to capture some of these information requirements. In addition, it assesses their value-added to prioritize the global agenda for strengthening HCES measurement of food consumption in support of more evidence-based nutrition policy making.

As the nature of global malnutrition changes, there is a growing need and increasing urgency for more and better information about food consumption and dietary patterns. The past two decades have seen a dramatic increase in the number, availability, and analysis of the food consumption data collected in a variety of multipurpose household surveys, referred to collectively as household consumption and expenditure surveys (HCESs). These surveys are heterogeneous, and their quality varies substantially by country. Still, they share some common shortcomings in their measurement of food consumption, nutrient intakes, and nutrition status that undermine their relevance and reliability for purposes of designing and implementing food policies and programs. This review crafts a strategic approach to the unfinished global agenda of improving HCESs’ collection of food consumption data. Starting with the priority studies recommended by a 100-country HCES review (Smith, Dupriez, and Troubat 2014), it focuses on a strategic subset of those studies that deal most directly and exclusively with the measurement of food, and that are of fundamental importance to all HCES stakeholders in low- and middle-income countries. Drawing from the literature, this study provides a more detailed, more circumspect justification as to why these particular studies are needed, while identifying key hypotheses, explaining why these studies are of growing urgency, and demonstrating why now is a propitious time for undertaking them. The review also identifies important study design considerations while pointing out potential challenges to successful implementation stemming from technical capacity, economic, administrative, and political considerations. Six key studies are rank ordered from a global perspective as follows, taking into account (1) the likely shared consensus that a topic is an important source of measurement error in estimating consumption; (2) the perceived urgency of the need for addressing a particular source of measurement error; (3) the perceived likelihood of success—that is, that the efforts will improve the accuracy of measurement; (4) whether or not the study entails modifying the questionnaire; (5) the ease with which a study may begin; and (6) the extent to which the study is independent of necessary negotiations with existing HCES stakeholders because of the types of changes it is likely to entail (in either the questionnaire or the way the data have traditionally been processed).