Evidence supports link between food insecurity, obesity in some groups of children
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Researchers said they found a potential link between food insecurity and increases in BMI in certain groups — particularly among infants, preschoolers and elementary and middle school students.
From 2017 to 2018, approximately 20% of U.S. children aged 2 to 19 years were estimated to have obesity, a prevalence that has increased by nearly 40% over the past 20 years.
Study co-author Christine St. Pierre, MPH, RDN, a researcher at George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health, said in a Healio interview that the study was prompted by pediatric BMI increases and food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic, which “highlighted the need to better understand how these dual public health issues relate to one another.”
“We were particularly interested in the potential effects of food insecurity on child weight outcomes over time, and to our knowledge, there was no prior review or evidence synthesis focusing on longitudinal studies,” St. Pierre said.
St. Pierre and colleagues searched databases for studies conducted in the U.S. in 2000 or later, and from a pool of more than 2,000 studies, 13 were analyzed to assess the connection between food insecurity and weight status.
Overall, the results were “mixed,” according to the researchers. The strongest associations between food insecurity and obesity or weight gain were found in early childhood, among girls and among children facing food insecurity at multiple time points.
St. Pierre cautioned that how food security was categorized in the 13 studies “made it difficult to draw broad conclusions” about the relationship between food insecurity and obesity.
“The mixed evidence from the studies also points to the complexity of the relationship between these two issues and the need to further research how food insecurity might interact with other demographic and household factors to affect child weight status,” St. Pierre said.
She added that addressing food insecurity — “or perhaps more accurately, nutrition insecurity — in children is paramount to the physical, mental and emotional well-being of both children and their caregivers. We can’t hope to reverse the rising obesity and diet-related chronic disease trends among U.S. children if we don’t work collaboratively across clinical, community and policy settings to ensure that all families can consistently access healthy and affordable foods for the optimal health of each family member.”