en public specific orginal article <p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;<strong>Background: </strong>Food insecurity consistently challenges middle-income countries, including Pakistan. The aim of this study was to evaluate the dietary food intake of the households in the selected location through a <span style="font-size:12px;">semi-structured questionnaire. Methods: A cross sectional study was carried out among 500 households comprised 2094 participants to investigate dietary intake and status of food insecurity. Furthermore, socio-demographic and weekly dietary food intake was collected through a semi-structured questionnaire in 2019. Those households who assent to participate were included in the study. Results: Mean household size was 5.80&plusmn;2.05 comprised 49.27% male and 50.61% female. Six food types were commonly consumed in the study population. Among these foods (g/capita/day) starch remained at the top 734.43 followed by fruits 256.02 and vegetables 89.77. These data highlighted limited dietary diversity and reduced dietary intake. The energy intake (per capita/day) from the food basket, contribution of the starch was the highest 32.37% versus protein 14.43%, milk 14.08%, vegetables 1.31%, and fruit 7.79% with an overall calories intake 81.08% from all food groups except tea. Finally, of the 500 households, 42.4% people were below the poverty line, 41.8% people at the poverty line, and 15.8% people were above the poverty line. Conclusion: The results showed that dietary intake of the participants was below the reference intake, demonstrating food insecurity and unbalanced diet.</span></p> Dietary intake, Food insecurity, Poverty, Food diversity 334 342 http://jnfs.ssu.ac.ir/browse.php?a_code=A-10-304-1&slc_lang=en&sid=1 Umar Bacha umar.bacha@umt.edu.pk 0000-0002-4156-1125 Yes School of Health Sciences, University of Management and Technology, C-II Johar Town, Lahore, Pakistan Saba Yousaf 0000-0002-6609-6530 No School of Health Sciences, University of Management and Technology, C-II Johar Town, Lahore, Pakistan Mehak Zafar 0000-0001-7960-3653 No School of Health Sciences, University of Management and Technology, C-II Johar Town, Lahore, Pakistan Ahmad Raza 0000-0001-5827-108X No School of Health Sciences, University of Management and Technology, C-II Johar Town, Lahore, Pakistan Muhammad Arbaz Khan 0000-0003-3834-766X No School of Health Sciences, University of Management and Technology, C-II Johar Town, Lahore, Pakistan Shahar Bano 0000-0003-3507-220X No School of Health Sciences, University of Management and Technology, C-II Johar Town, Lahore, Pakistan Zunaira Tauqeer 0000-0003-4046-0717 No School of Health Sciences, University of Management and Technology, C-II Johar Town, Lahore, Pakistan Faheem Mustafa 0000-0002-3957-9713 No School of Health Sciences, University of Management and Technology, C-II Johar Town, Lahore, Pakistan Muhammad Naveed Afzal 0000-0002-1659-9164 No School of Health Sciences, University of Management and Technology, C-II Johar Town, Lahore, Pakistan