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Meal Deficit Metric

Pinpointing Hunger at Hyper-Local Levels

Feeding Florida’s network of nine food banks developed the Meal Deficit Metric (MDM) to pinpoint the true gap between meals needed and meals accessed across Florida at the Census Block Group level. By replacing broad county-level estimates with hyper-local data, the MDM enables more strategic allocation of resources, targeted community interventions, and stronger accountability for reducing hunger.

Prior assessments of food insecurity have relied on countywide averages and broad household surveys. While these approaches highlight general trends, they fail to:

  • Account for every household’s access to charitable and government food supports (e.g., SNAP, WIC).
  • Reveal localized “hot spots” of unmet need within counties.
  • Identify under-resourced households that fall outside traditional poverty measures.

As a result, significant gaps persist, limiting the network’s ability to deploy interventions where they are needed most.

Methodology: The Meal Deficit Metric

Feeding Florida partnered with Mari Gallagher Research & Consulting Group to build an evidence-based model that:

  1. Aggregates national food access and socioeconomic datasets at the Census Block Group level.
  2. Calculates each household’s total potential food access (market purchases, charitable distribution, government benefits).
  3. Computes the residual “meal deficit” when access falls short of nutritional requirements.

This approach ensures coverage of all households—including working poor and A.L.I.C.E. populations—and provides geocoded outputs to guide local initiatives.

Key Findings

  • Meal deficits exist in every Census Block Group across Florida.
  • Total weekly missing meals across the state: 17,869,638
  • Total yearly missing meals across the state: 929,221,175
  • Highest deficits cluster in urban cores and rural regions with limited transportation or fresh-food retail.

These insights confirm that the scale of unmet need is higher than prior estimates and underscore the urgency of targeted responses.

For more information on this research: