I don't think that's a low bar. The US is an advanced economy. Why would people being unable to get fresh produce or have a balanced and varied diet be acceptable? Especially when you consider the obesity problems the country is facing.

I think that food insecurity meaning literal hunger pains is way too low a bar for the US. That number should be literally 0%. Food security for us should mean food that is healthy and excellent.

"food insecure at least some time during the year" includes people who at some point during the year didn't like the food they had available ("reduced desirability"). For example, someone could be getting their food from Meal Hubs and still be counted as food insecure.

If you surveyed specifically on whether people had access to fresh produce you'd get a much lower number.

I personally don't think that ~10% of people who are in the low food security box are doing great. They still seemed to do horribly in some of the metrics they gathered. For example, 80% of them felt they could not afford a balanced meal.

Then if you look at the very low security group, roughly 4% or 5 million people, it gets really worrisome. 32% of households said an adult had gone an entire day without eating anything.

And I think this is compounded by something like Covid-19. 85% and 95% of the low and very low food security groups said they were worried food would run out. What happens to them when people make a run on the stores like this last month? Their ability to buy food is strongly tethered to the day of the month when their EBT card is reloaded.

I think a lot of this is subjective, and globally the US is doing quite well compared to all countries. But I suspect we do poorly compared to other industrialized/advanced economies.

I'm relatively sure that saying "That chicken was alright, but the brine set in too strong and it was just too salty" doesn't fall within anyone's definition of food insecure.