**7.1 Food security at national level estimates**

Food security measures that are meant to be used at a national level often focus on how easy it is to get food. Food balance sheets, which are used to figure out how much food is available, have traditionally been based on national data on the total amount of food produced and imported (food supply) and the amount of food that is exported for many reasons, such as to be used as seed, to feed livestock, to process food and nonfood, or to be lost during storage and transportation [31]. The FAO's main way to measure food security is by the number of people who are undernourished. These data are used to make that number.

Food supply and usage data are valuable for anticipating food shortages and surpluses, projecting future food demand, and setting agricultural output targets [31]. It was observed that the average dietary energy intake was equal to the mean value of calorie consumption of the whole population [2]. This is an unjustified and inconsistent assumption. Despite the deficiency of comprehensive information on food distribution balance and losses, considerable differences were detected between these data and USDA estimates of food-insecure families [32]. The USDA uses income distribution statistics and aggregated food supply estimates to project the consumption of calories for different income groups [33].
