Food Insecurity Impacts Diet Quality, Health-Promoting Activities, and Perceived Stress

Abstract

Food insecurity, defined as inadequate access to nutritious food, affects over two billion people globally. Poor nutrition and stress associated with food insecurity may negatively impact the performance of health-promoting activities. It may also increase stress levels through irregular eating patterns and concern over accessing suffcient food. However, the impact of food insecurity on engagement in health-promoting activities, stress, and dietary factors has yet to be studied extensively. This study aims to fill this gap by assessing the impact of food insecurity on health-promoting activities, perceived stress, and diet quality. It is hypothesized that food insecurity will negatively impact perceived stress levels and the frequency of engagement in health-promoting activities. It also hypothesized that those who engage in these activities more frequently will have better diet quality. An anonymous survey was administered to adults through various social media platforms. The survey contained demographic questions and seven validated scales: the Food Insecurity Experience Scale, Satisfaction, Alertness, Timing, Effciency, and Duration (SATED) Questionnaire, Health Promoting Activities Scale, Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale, Perceived Stress Scale, International Physical Activity Questionnaire, and the Food Mood Questionnaire. These scales measured food insecurity status, sleep quality, frequency of health-promoting activities and self-care, self-esteem, perceived stress levels, physical activity, and dietary habits, respectively. Data from 561 individuals were analyzed using Pearson’s Correlation Coeffcient in IBM SPSS Version 28.0. The results indicate that being unable to eat healthy and nutritious food was negatively associated with performing personal care tasks (r= -0.136, p< 0.01) and social activities (r= -0.146, p< 0.01). It was also found that having to skip a meal was positively associated with being upset when something happens unexpectedly (r= 0.218, p< 0.01) and feeling unable to control the important things in life (r= 0.242, p< 0.01). Further, performing personal care tasks was negatively associated with eating fast food (r= -0.120, p< 0.01) and positively associated with consuming dark green, leafy vegetables (r= 0.216, p< 0.01), whole grains (r= 0.195, p< 0.01), and fruit (r= 0.287, p< 0.01). Our results suggest that food insecurity can negatively impact mental well-being, diet quality, and health-promoting behaviors. Interventions aimed at improving food security, and therefore diet quality, may have benefits for improving overall health and well-being. No funding was provided to conduct this research study. This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2024 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.