Abstract

ANABELLA, Mgtr. Zanini; SUSANA, Mgtr. Buamden; MGTR. CONCILIO, María Celeste  and  DRA. ROSSI, María Laura. Measurement of food security in nutrition students of the National University of La Matanza in 2018. Diaeta [online]. 2021, vol.39, n.174, pp.22-31. ISSN 1852-7337.

Introduction: food security exists when all people have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food at all times to meet their nutritional needs and food preferences in order to lead an active and healthy life. Ensuring food security refers specifically to satisfying a basic right: the human right to food.

Objective: to relate the degree of food safety with the economic capacity among students attending the nutrition career at National University of La Matanza, (UNLaM), La Matanza, 2018.

Materials and Method: transversal descriptive design. A survey was applied that included the Latin American and Caribbean Food Security Scale (ELCSA) proposed by FAO. The economic capacity of the students' homes was also measured with the CAPECO index used by INDEC.

Results: only 36% of households in the sample have food security. 63.7% of the students evaluated (n = 369) suffer from food insecurity in their homes. There is a relationship between food insecurity and economic capacity in households (p=0.0013). The place of residence is related to food security (p=0.04). Students living in La Matanza have the highest percentages of food insecurity (67.7%) followed by those living in other areas of Greater Buenos Aires (62.2%). Among those living in CABA there are no households with low or very low economic capacity and food insecurity tends to be milder as well as lower (45.5%).

Conclusions: the high percentage of Nutrition students who have difficulties in their homes to ensure adequate food through this measurement is alarming. This indicator should be monitored over time within the career and it should also be compared with other careers of the University.

Keywords : food security; right to food; students; ELCSA.

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