food insecure

adjective

variants or less commonly food-insecure

ˈfüd-ˌin-si-ˈkyu̇r 

: unable to consistently access or afford adequate food

According to data released last week by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 17 percent of Americans—more than 50 million people—live in households that are "food insecure," a term that means a family sometimes runs out of money to buy food, or it sometimes runs out of food before it can get more money.

—Lisa Miller

A food-insecure household may be faced with the difficult choice of paying for basic necessities, such as health care and housing, or buying nutritionally adequate foods.

—Elyse Miller

Examples of food insecure in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Nearly 13 million people across the country are estimated to be food insecure, the agency said. —Camilla Alcini, ABC News, 10 Dec. 2024

Little Free Pantry — Launched from Fayetteville, this is a movement to help the food insecure all over the country. —Worth Sparkman, Axios, 2 Dec. 2024

Of the thousands of veterans surveyed by Yale School of Medicine's Veterans Aging Cohort Study, 24% reported being food insecure. —Pilar Arias, Fox News, 27 Nov. 2024

Meanwhile, according to Feeding America, a U.S. hunger relief nonprofit, 1 in 9 working-age veterans are food insecure. —Rachel Dobkin, Newsweek, 27 Nov. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1977, in the meaning defined above