The Relationship between Food Insecurity and Risk of Overweight or Obesity in under 18 Years Individuals: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Ali Pourmotabbed; Seyedeh Parisa Moosavian; Amir Hadi; Hamed Mohammadi; Alireza Dadfarma; Shahabeddin Rezaei; Atefeh Babaei; Sajjad Moradi; Khadijah Mirzaei

doi:10.4103/ijpvm.IJPVM_463_19

The Relationship between Food Insecurity and Risk of Overweight or Obesity in under 18 Years Individuals: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Int J Prev Med. 2020 Sep 22:11:158. doi: 10.4103/ijpvm.IJPVM_463_19. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Ali Pourmotabbed¹, Seyedeh Parisa Moosavian², Amir Hadi³, Hamed Mohammadi², Alireza Dadfarma⁴, Shahabeddin Rezaei⁵, Atefeh Babaei¹, Sajjad Moradi^{3

6}, Khadijah Mirzaei⁷

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physiology, School of Medicine, Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, Kermanshah, Iran.
² Department of Clinical Nutrition, School of Nutrition and Food Science, Food Security Research Center, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran.
³ Halal Research Center of IRI, FDA, Tehran, Iran.
⁴ Department of Cellular and Molecular Nutrition, School of Nutritional Sciences and Dietetics, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
⁵ Department of Clinical Nutrition, School of Nutritional Sciences and Dietetics, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
⁶ Department of Clinical Nutrition, School of Nutrition and Food Science, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran.
⁷ Department of Community Nutrition, School of Nutritional Sciences and Dietetics, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Objective: Food insecurit (FI) has been considered as reason for childhood and adolescent overweight/obesity (OW/OB). Hence, this study was undertaken to assess these relationships.

Design: Related articles were found by searching the Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed and Embase databases until October 2019. Odds ratio (OR) was analized by a random-effects model. Standard methods were used for assessment of heterogeneity and publication bias. Data were available from 32 studies. The risk ratios of 139,762 participants were pooled from these articles for the meta-analysis.

Results: This study domenstrated that children and adolescents in food-insecure condition are not at risk of OW/OB (OR = 1.02 95% CI: 0.99, 1.05). However, subgroup analysis indicated that FI related with inhanced risk of OW/OB in adolescents living in developed countries (OR = 1.14; 95% CI: 1.02, 1.27). Other subgroup analysis indicated that severe FI increased the risk of OW/OB among adolescents (OR = 1.24 95% CI: 1.03-1.49). In addition, we found that lower economic development significantly decreased risk of OW/OB among under 6 year children (OR = 0.88; 95% CI: 0.84, 0.93).

Conclusions: Our results showed that higher FI degrees were related with more risks of OW/OB among adolescents (12-18 years). Moreover, the country economic levels had effect on the association between FI and risk of OW/OB.

Keywords: Adolescents; children; food insecurity; obesity risk; overweight risk.

Publication types

Review