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In an example from the global south, Panter-Brick and colleagues (2008) examined multiple aspects of household livelihood and intrafamilial malnutrition in Niger. They show how a host of structural and behavioral factors conspire to lead some children, but not others in the same family, to spiral down from mild to moderate to severe malnutrition. Families suffer from food insecurity, especially when fathers migrated in search of work. Foods they could afford were of poor nutritional quality, families spent relatively large sums on malaria treatments, and children were weaned early due to a high premium on fertility or perceived inadequacy of breast milk. Their work shows both the necessity to consider many dimensions of class and culture to understand intra-household nutrition and also that development efforts must do more than providing basic access to food.

Even more recently, critical biocultural anthropologists have extended research into insecurity to the issues of water insecurity (e.g., Brewis et al. 2020; Ennis-McMillan 2001; Wutich 2019 ; see also Whiteford and Padros 2011 and this volume) as an important biocultural problem of human health and well-being. Indeed, water insecurity may well be one of the greatest threats to human well-being in the coming century, especially given the climate change scenarios. Wutich (2019) notes that within the decade half the world’s populations are expected to be living in water-stressed conditions.