7 Food Security in Vietnam During the 1990s: The Empirical Evidence

Abstract

Analysing the performance of ten developing countries, Hoddinot and Yohannes (2002) find a strong association between two measures of food security (calorie intake and mostly dietary diversity) and the increase in expenditures per capita. Using various indicators of food security, we describe the changes in food balances in Vietnam and find evidence of a substitution of poor micronutrients items (rice and cereals) with rich ones like fruit, vegetables fish and meat. Poor households, while increasing the amount of calories consumed, still lack vitamins, iron, calcium, etc. A preliminary assessment of the food security variation showed that improvements were, as expected, more concentrated among the richer Vietnamese households than the poor ones, although there was some improvement among poorer strata as well. We also focus on the calorie/expenditure elasticity and compare results for the years 1993 and 1998. Our findings confirm that this link is strong, and show that calorie income elasticity changed in the expected direction. We conclude that in general food security improved in Vietnam during 1990s although considerable differences still remain among expenditure deciles and among regions due to the accentuated spatial difference.

Dietary Diversity, Food Security and Undernourishment: The Vietnamese Evidence*

“…This study adds to a growing literature on food security and calorie consumption in Vietnam (see e.g. Hop, 2003;Dien et al 2004;Thang and Popkin, 2004;Molini, 2006). Much of this evidence relates to the 1990s, but, as the present study reports, there were dramatic changes in both the magnitude and pattern of Vietnamese food consumption at the turn of the century that have led to considerable improvement in food security in Vietnam in the new millennium.…”

“…2 In the cases of some minor food items (e.g. 'other sea food,' and 'carbonated beverages') and 'eating out,' for which quantity information is not available, we followed the practice, adopted by Dien et al (2004) and Molini (2006), of converting the available expenditure information into calories using the average price of calories to the household from the rest of the food items; that is those for which the quantity information is available. As pointed out by Dien et al (2004, p. 44), because the practice of eating out in Vietnam has increased substantially in recent years, failure to include the calories from meals consumed outside the home and from several of the smaller food items would have resulted in a serious underestimation of energy intake, especially in urban areas.…”

Food consumption patterns and associated factors among Vietnamese women of reproductive age

“…Moreover, studies using data from the Vietnam Household Living Standard Surveys relied on expenditure data to compute intakes, and did not specify how intakes were estimated for foods without information on amounts purchased [4]. Other studies employed aggregate consumption data across food groups to estimate energy and nutrient consumption from Vietnamese [4] or international food composition tables [3,22], and treated foods consumed outside the home as a single category. In contrast, this study presents data obtained at the individual level from WRA using a previously validated semi-quantitative FFQ and a food composition database compiled specifically for use in Vietnam, estimating energy and nutrient intakes from all foods, whether consumed inside or outside the home.…”

Determining key research areas for healthier diets and sustainable food systems in Viet Nam

“…As a consequence, LMICs now face not only undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies, but have also experienced the most rapid increases in the prevalence of overweight, obesity, and other diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs) (Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition, 2016; Kelly, 2016;Popkin, 2014), defined as the "triple burden" of malnutrition. Viet Nam's specific context demonstrates this example: during the country's rapid economic growth, following its liberating reforms in 1986 and the rapid rate in poverty reduction in the 1990s, the average caloric intake increased in almost all regions of the country, albeit with diverging intensity (Molini 2006). Despite the dominance of small-scale production and supply through traditional informal markets and small retail stores, the penetration of international food and standards, coupled with large-scale Vietnamese private sector investments, and the trend towards an increasingly meat-based diet, are transforming the agrifood sector from predominantly smallholder farming into largescale enterprise oriented farming.…”