In the United States, where food is plentiful nationwide, detection of populations at risk of hunger and malnutrition must rely more on social and economic indicators than on physiological indices, important as these are. Large federal programs expanded or created after the 1969 White House Conference on Food, Nutrition, and Health were shown to be successful during the 1970s in reducing hunger and malnutrition as a massive social phenomenon, even though poverty conditions remained the same. Studies that apply our knowledge of nutritional and dietary requirements to construct a "market basket" of inexpensive, commonly used foods that meet the Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA) and that set estimated minimum incomes as a multiple of the cost of such an "RDA-based market basket" plus the costs of other necessities would identify populations and families at risk and permit better targeting of food programs.