Association of Household Food Insecurity with the Mental and Physical Health of Low-Income Urban Ecuadorian Women with Children.

M Margaret Weigel,Rodrigo X Armijos,Nancy P Castro,Marcia Racines,William Cevallos

doi:10.1155/2016/5256084

Abstract

Chronic physical and mental health conditions account for a rising proportion of morbidity, mortality, and disability in the Americas region. Household food insecurity (HFI) has been linked to chronic disease in US and Canadian women but it is uncertain if the same is true for low- and middle-income Latin American countries in epidemiologic transition. We conducted a survey to investigate the association of HFI with the physical and mental health of 794 women with children living in low-income Quito, Ecuador, neighborhoods. Data were collected on HFI and health indicators including self-reported health (SF-1), mental health (MHI-5), blood pressure, and self-reported mental and physical health complaints. Fasting blood glucose and lipids were measured in a subsample. The multivariate analyses revealed that HFI was associated with poorer self-rated health, low MHI-5 scores, and mental health complaints including stress, depression, and ethnospecific illnesses. It was also associated with chest tightness/discomfort/pain, dental disease, and gastrointestinal illness but not other conditions. The findings suggest that improving food security in low-income households may help reduce the burden of mental distress in women with children. The hypothesized link with diabetes and hypertension may become more apparent as Ecuador moves further along in the epidemiologic transition.

Highlights

Food insecurity, “the limited or uncertain availability of nutritional adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways,” [1] is reported to be highly prevalent in many low- and middle-income Latin American countries [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11] including Ecuador [12,13,14,15]
It is one of a small handful of published studies to examine the association of Household food insecurity (HFI) with the mental or physical health outcomes of adults living in Latin American countries
As we reported previously [12], the high prevalence of food insecurity reported by the Ecuadorian households was consistent with estimates published for low-income urban households in other Latin American countries using similar experiencebased instruments

Summary

Introduction

“the limited or uncertain availability of nutritional adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways,” [1] is reported to be highly prevalent in many low- and middle-income Latin American countries [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11] including Ecuador [12,13,14,15]. Ecuador and many of its neighbors [16] are undergoing nutritional and epidemiologic transitions marked by increasing dietary intakes of energy-dense, ultraprocessed fast/convenience foods and beverages, lower physical activity and increased sedentarism, and increasing rates of obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and other chronic diseases [17,18,19,20]. The prevalence of depression, anxiety disorders, and other mental health conditions are reported to be increasing in Ecuador and many other Latin American populations [16, 21,22,23]. The rising rates of chronic physical and mental conditions, in addition to the substantial burden imposed by vector-borne and other infectious diseases, are placing a severe strain on the already overburdened public health systems and national economies throughout the region [24, 25]. The evidence suggests that consumption of energy-dense diets is associated with increased body weight and other adiposity indicators

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