**7.4 Household measuring food access**

Some of the more talked-about ways to measure food security only describe the national food supplies. But because they focus on estimates and trends at the national or regional level, they do not pay much attention to how households act and other factors that affect food access. At the household level, there are a number of tools that can be used to measure changes in food security between and within households. Because these measures use information from household surveys, they can measure the "access" part of food security more accurately than those measures that use information from the whole country. But various methods used to measure food access actually measure how people get food or how much food they eat. Food access means being able to get food both physically and financially. However, numerous tools are used to measure food access to measure how much food is bought. It is a standard practice to use both terms interchangeably when referring to food access; nonetheless, it is vital to differentiate between the two for the sake of measurement [37].
