Abstract
Diabetes has become a serious public health concern. The objective of the present study is to examine the sociodemographic and lifestyle factors associated with consumption of sugar-sweetened food among different age groups of households in Malaysia. A nationally representative data (n = 14838) is used for secondary analysis. Multiple regressions are used to examine the independent effects of sociodemographic and lifestyle factors on household expenditure on sugar-sweetened food. Analyse are stratified by age group. Households headed by older individuals tend to spend more on sugar-sweetened food than households headed by younger individuals. Household size is positively associated with household consumption of sugar-sweetened food. Bumiputera households spend more on sugar-sweetened food than non-Bumiputera households. Sociodemographic and lifestyle factors play an important role in determining consumption of sugar-sweetened food. Policy makers should pay special attention to the types of households that consume a lot of sugar-sweetened food.
Highlights
Huge increases in the prevalence of diabetes have become a serious public health concern
Households headed by older individuals consume more sugar-sweetened food than households headed by younger individuals, which is in contrast to the findings of previous studies that older people are less likely to consume sugar-added drinks than younger people (Rehm et al, 2008; Bleich & Wang, 2011; Mullie et al, 2012; Park et al, 2013; Zytnick et al, 2015; Pollard et al, 2016; Park et al, 2016; Xu et al, 2018)
We find that when household heads are young, education does not play an important role in affecting household consumption of sugar-sweetened food
Summary
Huge increases in the prevalence of diabetes have become a serious public health concern. The number of diabetic patients worldwide increased to more than 300 million from 1980 to 2014 (World Health Organization, 2018). The prevalence of diabetes in Malaysia is similar to that of developed countries in Asia, such as Japan, Korea, and Singapore (Tee & Yap, 2017). It was doubled from 6.9% in 1996 to 17.5% in 2015 (Tee & Yap, 2017). The highest prevalence was evidenced in the age group of 60 years and above, accounting for 36.6% of the total prevalence (Tee & Yap, 2017)
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