The terms “food security” and “food insecurity” were popularized in the early 1970s. The U.S. Congress published a report titled World Food Security (1973) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations published a report with the same title in the same year. Lester H. Brown, a senior fellow of the Overseas Development Council, wrote about “Global Food Insecurity” for the Los Angeles (CA) Times in 1974, and “Growing global food insecurity” was a chapter in his book, By Bread Alone (1974).
 
The World Health Organization defines “food security” by food availability, food access and food use. The United States Department of Agriculture reported in 2012 that nearly 17 million Americans suffered from “very low food security, meaning at times they ran out of food and didn’t have money to buy more.”
 
   
Wikipedia: Food security
Food security refers to a household’s physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that fulfills the dietary needs and food preferences of that household for living an active and healthy life.
 
The World Health Organization defines food security as having three facets: food availability, food access, and food use. Food availability is having available sufficient quantities of food on a consistent basis. Food access is having sufficient resources, both economic and physical, to obtain appropriate foods for a nutritious diet. Food use is the appropriate use based on knowledge of basic nutrition and care, as well as adequate water and sanitation. The FAO adds a fourth facet: the stability of the first three dimensions of food security over time.
 
World Health Organization
Food Security
The World Food Summit of 1996 defined food security as existing “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life”. Commonly, the concept of food security is defined as including both physical and economic access to food that meets people’s dietary needs as well as their food preferences. In many countries, health problems related to dietary excess are an ever increasing threat, In fact, malnutrion and foodborne diarrhea are become double burden.
     
Food security is built on three pillars:
 
. Food availability: sufficient quantities of food available on a consistent basis.
. Food access: having sufficient resources to obtain appropriate foods for a nutritious diet.
. Food use: appropriate use based on knowledge of basic nutrition and care, as well as adequate water and sanitation.
 
United States Department of Agriculture—Economic Research Service
Food Security in the U.S.
Food security means access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life.
 
ERS plays a leading role in Federal research on food security and food security measurement in U.S. households and communities and provides data access and technical support to social science scholars to facilitate their research on food security. ERS research focuses on:
 
. food security in U.S. households,
. food security’s impact on the well-being of children, adults, families, and communities, and
. food security’s relationship to public policies, public assistance programs, and the economy.
   
Food for Others (Northern VA)
What is food insecurity?
Food insecurity means that individuals or families are so limited in their resources to buy food that they are running out of food, reducing the quality of their food, cutting out meat, feeding their children unbalanced meals, or skipping meals so that their children can eat.
 
Google News Archive
13 May 1973, The Ledger (Lakeland, FL), ‘Steps Planned To Insure Grain Reserves” by Gene Kramer, pg. 25A, cols. 2-3:
UNITED NATIONS, N.Y. (AP)—The world reserves of grain are reported so low that some areas may face starvation if the coming harvest is poor.
(...)
As a result, FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations—ed.) is drafting a “minimum world food security” problem in which major consuming countries would share with grain-growing countries the responsibility for emergency stockpiling.
   
OCLC WorldCat record
World food security : report of the Subcommittee on Foreign Agricultural Policy of the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, United States Senate
Author: Timothy Edward Josling; United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Agriculture and Forestry. Subcommittee on Foreign Agricultural Policy.; Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service.
Publisher: Washington : U.S. G.P.O., 1973.
Edition/Format:  Book : National government publication : English
 
OCLC WorldCat record
World food security : proposal of the Director-General
Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Publisher: [Washington], 1973.
Series: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Conference, 17. sess., Rome, 10.-29.11.1973, item 7(b) of the provisional agenda, C, 73/17. 
Edition/Format:  Book : English
 
OCLC WorldCat record
National nutrition policy: selected papers on food security and availability; a working paper.
Author: Emma M Blacken; United States. Congress. Senate. Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs.
Publisher: Washington, U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1974.
Series: 93d Congress, 2d Session. Committee print. 
Edition/Format:  Book : National government publication : English
 
12 September 1974, Morning Advocate (Baton Rouge, LA), pg. 8B, col. 2:
Global Food Insecurity
Tied to Reserve Decline
(Lester H. Brown is a senior fellow of the Overseas Development Council, Washington. This article is adapted from “By Bread Alone,” a forthcoming book by Brown written with Erik P. Eckholm.)
BY LESTER H. BROWN
Special to The Los Angeles Times
Growing global insecurity on the food front is directly related to the precipitous decline in world food reserves.
 
OCLC WorldCat record
By bread alone
Author: Lester Russell Brown; Erik P Eckholm
Publisher: New York, Praeger [1974]
Edition/Format:  Book : English
Contents:
Foreword / James P. Grant—
The changing face of food scarcity—
Pt. 1. Dimensions of the problem. History and geography of malnutrition—
Population and affluence—
Ecological undermining of food systems—
Growing global food insecurity—
 
OCLC WorldCat record
World food insecurity : has anything happened since Rome?
Author: Martin Michael McLaughlin; Overseas Development Council.
Publisher: Washington : Overseas Development Council, 1975.
Series: Communique on development issues, no. 27. 
Edition/Format:  Book : English
 
OCLC WorldCat record
Food insecurity, magnitude and remedies : abstract
Author: Shlomo Reutlinger; World Bank.
Publisher: Washington, D.C. : World Bank, ©1977.
Series: World Bank staff working paper, no. 267. 
Edition/Format:  Book : International government publication : English
 
Google Books
Food Security:
An Insurance Approach
By Panos A. Konandreas, Barbara Huddleston and Virabongsa Ramangkura
Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute
1978
Pg. 18:
Although specific to developing countries, this proposal treats only one of the two aspects of food insecurity.
 
The two sources of food insecurity in developing, food deficit countries are: (1) a temporary reduction in domestic food production and (2) a temporary increase in international foodgrain prices.
 
OCLC WorldCat record
Food insecurity in developing countries
Author: Amma Sayamwala.; Alberto Valdés; International Food Policy Research Institute.
Publisher: [Washington, D.C. : International Food Policy Research Institute], 1980.
Edition/Format:  Book : English
 
Google Books
Family Poverty In Diverse Contexts
By Alfred Louis Joseph Jr. and C. Anne Broussard
New York, NY: Routledge
2009
Pg. 177:
Food insecurity means that access to food is unstable and inconsistent, while hunger refers to the lack of available food (Hall & Brown, 2005). Of the two, hunger is more severe.
 
WBAY (Green Bay, WI)
Food Insecurity
Updated: Sep 07, 2012 2:59 PM CDT
A new report shows more than 50 million Americans couldn’t afford to buy food at some point last year.
 
The Department of Agriculture says in 2011 children in close to four-million households suffered from what’s called “food insecurity.” That means their families couldn’t always provide them with adequate, nutritious food.
 
Nearly 17 million Americans suffered from “very low food security, meaning at times they ran out of food and didn’t have money to buy more. For many families, this happened a few days every month.”