The Prevalence of Food Insecurity and its Association with Non-Communicable Diseases Risk Factors: a Cross-Sectional Study in Alborz Province, Iran

ABSTRACT

Food insecurity (FI) is a public health concern that affects health status. In this study, we aimed to investigate the FI status, and the probable link between FI and a number of risk factors related to Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) in Alborz Province, Iran. This was a cross-sectional study in which 983 housewives living in Alborz Province, with the age range of 18–65 years were selected randomly using a multi-stage cluster sampling method, between 2018 and 2019. Demographic Questionnaire, Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS), International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ), Anthropometric Measurements (weight, body mass index (BMI), waist-to-height ratio (WHtR), waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), and waist, hip, and Neck Circumferences (WC,HC, and NC)), and systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP and DBP) were measured. Multivariable binary logistic regressions were used to evaluate the association between mentioned variables and FI status. The prevalence of FI in the study population was 61.24 percent (95 percent CI: 58.11–64.30). In a Multivariable binary logistic regressions model, participants in the highest stages of FI had significantly lower risk of BMI (OR: 0.62 95 percent CI 0.45–1.10) (p .007), NC (OR: 0.51; 95 percent CI 0.28–0.95) (p .03), and WHR (OR: 0.50; 95 percent CI 0.29–0.88) (p .011) in comparison with food secure group. FI was highly prevalent in our study population. Despite the high prevalence of overweight and obesity, there were no significant differences in terms of weight between groups.

KEYWORDS:

• Food insecurity
• health status
• Iran
• non-communicable disease

Acknowledgment

We like to thank all those who helped us in conducting this study, especially all the participants and their families, as well as the hard-working data collection groups, for their cooperation. We also thank Alborz University of Medical Sciences for their help in facilitating this research.

Data Availability Statement

Due to privacy and ethical restrictions, the data are not publicly available. However, all the data supporting the findings of this study are available on the request from the corresponding author.

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.