The Food Consumption Score (FCS) is the World
Food Programme’s main food access indicator, a proxy for
household diet quantity and quality. The score is based on the
number of days in a week eight food groups were eaten, and
thresholds classify households as having poor, borderline or
acceptable food consumption. The ability of the FCS and its
thresholds to classify household’s consumption consistently
are vital as food assistance is directed towards areas and
population groups where prevalence of inadequate food consumption
is high. As there are indications that the current
thresholds underestimate inadequate consumption, this paper
asks whether FCS thresholds can be identified corresponding
to inadequate energy consumption, the quantity dimension of
the score. The analysis uses household survey data that include
comprehensive modules on food consumption as well as
the information necessary to calculate the FCS from six countries.
The results show that the FCS is significantly but not
highly correlated with calorie intake. Not counting foods eaten
in small quantities, clearly improves the association between
the FCS and caloric intake, but the analysis suggests that in
practice it is difficult to exclude the small quantities.
Established sensitivity and specificity criteria for suitable
thresholds are not met and this paper concludes that it is not
appropriate to identify FCS thresholds that adequately
correspond to caloric thresholds. The analysis illustrates that
the FCS depicts both quantitative and qualitative aspects of
food consumption and concludes that a future strategy should
be to anchor thresholds in an indicator comprising both these
dimensions.