food secure

American  

[food si-kyoor] / ˈfud sɪˈkyʊər /

Or food-secure

adjective

1. having or characterized by ready access to safe and nutritionally adequate food.

   In addition to eating more meals and becoming more food secure, families there are also improving their housing conditions.

   A more sustainable and food-secure future needs to be built by all of us.

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Etymology

Origin of food secure

First recorded in 1980–85

Explanation

A community or family that is food-secure is able to get the food they need on a regular basis for maintaining health, whether they grow it themselves or buy it from a stable source at a price they can afford. Many things can keep people from being food-secure, such as crop failure, natural disasters, war, poverty, or unemployment. Food-secure is the opposite of food-insecure; people who are food-insecure are not able to get enough food to stay healthy, or they’re only able to get it sometimes but not reliably. As you might be able to guess, the corresponding nouns are food security and food insecurity.

Example Sentences

Children with avid eating were also less food secure than children who showed happy or typical eating behaviours.

From Science Daily • Oct. 18, 2023

Our participants from this location were white, food secure and primarily highly educated.

From Salon • Nov. 14, 2022

The South Bronx has one of the highest death rates from asthma in the country, in part because of dilapidated public housing; it is also one of the least food secure regions in America.

From New York Times • Dec. 3, 2021

“One thing you want to be is food secure, so this project makes a lot of sense,” Ratcliff said.

From Seattle Times • Jan. 5, 2018

Out of 12 million people, 5 million people are food secure.

From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 6, 2016