From Food Aid Invoices to Impact: A New Method to Quantify Caloric Intake from Community Kitchens in Conflict Affected Sudan

Abstract In conflict-affected regions, especially contested and inaccessible settings, where data collection is often limited, monitoring food availability and identifying populations at high nutritional risk remains a significant challenge. In Sudan, where armed conflict by military actors persists into a third year, a complex humanitarian crisis has unfolded, marked by hindered international humanitarian access and a deficiency of up-to-date information about the ground reality. In this context, locally-led food aid interventions play a vital role in mitigating food insecurity, especially in besieged settings with poor or no access to external food aid. ‘Community Kitchens’ or Takaya’s as they are known locally are a cornerstone of these interventions, providing cooked meals neighbourhood by neighbourhood. We present a novel operational method that uses food purchase invoices and attendance records from these kitchens to estimate caloric intake among beneficiaries, offering an alternative means of estimating caloric intake where traditional nutrition information is not possible. By linking data from handwritten food aid invoices, ingredient lists, and attendance records, we calculated the average caloric intake of beneficiaries and tracked changes over time and across multiple kitchens. Our methodology demonstrates the feasibility of using invoice-based modelling to understand food aid distribution and calorie intake from existing operational data. Our method represents a rapid and flexible way of measuring the impact and trend of food availabilities in otherwise inaccessible settings. Our results indicate that community kitchen food aid significantly and rapidly improved caloric intake among those who accessed it. However, overall kitchen coverage remains limited with variations on impact linked to funding restrictions, increases in food prices and attacks on kitchens and their staff. This work highlights the importance of community-led food aid and the utility of operational data where widescale nutritional data collection is not possible. It also reinforces the urgent need to sustain and increase community kitchen interventions, especially in response to escalating operational challenges, to the already nutritionally compromised populations they serve.