This paper examines the post-implementation evolution of food insecurity measurement in Canada using the Household Food Security Survey Module (HFSSM) as a deprivation indicator. Widely accepted as a reliable and valid indicator, here, we examine the question: An indicator of what? Following an overview on the design of the HFSSM measure which focuses on its disciplinary and theoretical foundations, we review Canadian empirical literature employing the HFSSM subjective measure and scoring system, particularly evidence of objective health outcomes on a social gradient, sensitive to even one affirmative in the 18-question module. The sociological interpretation offered in this paper is that the scope of deprivation captured by the single instrument over two decades of its implementation in Canadian society has expanded. At higher scores the metric is clearly an outcome-based poverty measure, indicating that social protection policy to address inadequacy of material resources for the most vulnerable remains paramount. However, the results for lower scores suggest the growing significance of social exclusion in postmodernity from a consumption perspective, which aligns with developments in Europe. Given the strength of the HFSSM as an indicator of both material deprivation and social exclusion, the value of situating food in future deprivation measurement in Canada and other high-income countries is at best a puzzle; at worst a conflation of food policy and social policy.
Mah et al. (Sun,) studied this question.