Food and job insecurity is now the primary cause of concern for families in Afghanistan, Anthea Webb, deputy regional director for the World Food Program (WFP), told a UN press briefing on Friday.

With winter setting in and the economy on the verge of collapsing, their worries are also growing, Webb said via a conference call.

Quoting from the latest WFP survey, she said that 93 percent of households in Afghanistan don't have sufficient access to food now.

The randomized phone survey, carried out from August 21 to September 5 in all provinces in the country, indicated that three in four Afghan families have been reducing portions or borrowing food.

"They are buying cheaper food, foregoing more nutritious options such as meat, dairy products and vegetables. Parents are skipping meals entirely to allow their children to eat," Webb said.

She added that food insecurity in Afghanistan had already been widespread before August 15, with 81 percent of households reporting insufficient food consumption and one in three Afghans signaling acute food insecurity.

"It is now a race against time to deliver lifesaving assistance to the Afghan people before roads are cut off by snow," the UN official said.

She said that the main reason the situation had gotten so much worse over the past month was that many Afghans did not have access to the money they needed to buy enough food.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has announced that he will travel to Geneva on September 13 to convene a high-level humanitarian meeting to address the growing needs in Afghanistan.

Guterres appealed on Friday for an injection of cash into Afghanistan to avoid an economic meltdown that would spark a "catastrophic" situation for the Afghan people and be a "gift for terrorist groups."

His remarks come after his special envoy on Afghanistan, Deborah Lyons, warned the Security Council on Thursday that the freezing of billions of dollars in international Afghan assets to keep them out of Taliban hands would inevitably spark "a severe economic downturn."

(With input from Xinhua, Reuters)