Over the years, obesity has become a pressing issue in the U.S., with nearly 30% of Americans afflicted by the condition. Although the assumption is that extreme weight gain is usually caused by binge eating, a variety of factors are usually at play. One such factor is food insecurity, which is defined as the lack of access to enough food for an active, healthy life. Internationally, food insecurity is usually caused by the frequency of conflict as well as the climate-related failure of harvests but in the U.S., it is most often due to limited financial resources.
According to a recent analysis of trends in food security, the association between food insecurity and obesity has doubled since 1999-2000. The analysis was based on data collected through the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (“NHANES”) from over 46,000 adults in the U.S. The Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, LA analyzed data collected from 1999 to 2016, with researchers focusing on measures related to food security and body fat, body mass index (“BMI”), and waist circumference.
The researchers found that there was a significant increase in food insecurity rates during this time, hitting a peak of 18.2% in 2015-2016. By 2015-2016, 12% of women who were obese also had food insecurity compared with women of moderate weight and 20% of obese men had low food security as opposed to the 16% who were of normal weight. At the moment, nearly 23% of people with obesity in the United States have reported food insecurity compared to 15% with moderate or average weight. Medical News Today reports that “degrees of low food security can reduce the quality, variety, and desirability of a person’s diet, even in wealthy nations like the U.S.”
Feeding America.org states that “although food insecurity is closely related to poverty, not all people living below the poverty line experience food insecurity and people living above the poverty line can experience food insecurity.” Most Americans who experience food insecurity most likely have an income that isn’t enough to cover all their expenses as well as a healthy, balanced diet.
In children, food insecurity results in a range of negative health outcomes such as anemia, poor cognitive performance, and behavioral problems. In adults, there is an increased risk of depression, asthma, hypertension, and diabetes. Most cheap foods contain high amounts of “empty calories”, forcing people to eat a lot more to feel full. According to the resource scarcity hypothesis, an increased intake of inexpensive, high-calorie foods forms a cycle with skipping meals and intermittent hunger.
This eventually leads to psychological changes that encourage the deposition of fat and decreased energy and exercise. “Food insecurity and obesity are not mutually exclusive,” says Dr. Candice Myers, an assistant professor at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center and the study’s lead author. “Rather, these health issues are linked in such a way that a solution will require a public policy that addresses both at the same time.”
As biomedical entities like 180 Life Sciences Corp. will tell you, a nutritionally deficient person is difficult to treat when they are ill, so food insecurity is a serious issue that deserves all our attention.
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