Food Insecurity, Dietary Patterns, and Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) in Windhoek, Namibia

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the relationship between dietary patterns and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in Windhoek based on data from a cross-sectional random sample of 863 households. We identify three major dietary patterns: starch–sugar–oil, fruits–vegetables, and meat–fish, which explain more than 43% of the variation in food consumption. High uptake levels of starch–sugar–oil diets are associated with diabetes, and also increase heart problems. Females were at greater risk of cardio-vascular disease (CVD) and hypertension, while there is an increased risk of disease with age. Highly food insecure residents in informal settlements displayed lower than expected rates of NCDs.

KEYWORDS:

• Food insecurity
• NCDs
• informal settlements
• dietary patterns
• Windhoek
• Namibia

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank the IDRC and SSHRC-funded Hungry Cities Partnership (http://hungrycities.net) for funding the survey on which this paper is based and the IDRC-funded Nourishing Spaces Project at the African Centre for Cities for funding the data analysis and report writing.

Declaration of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the International Development Research Centre [108458,107775]; Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [895 –2015-3005].