Food Insecurity, Poor Diet Quality, and Suboptimal Intakes of Folate and Iron Are Independently Associated with Perceived Mental Health in Canadian Adults

Abstract

Background: To address nutrition-related population mental health data gaps, we examined relationships among food insecurity, diet quality, and perceived mental health. Methods: Stratified and logistic regression analyses of respondents aged 19–70 years from the Canadian Community Health Survey, Cycle 2.2 were conducted (n = 15,546). Measures included the Household Food Security Survey Module, diet quality (i.e., comparisons to the Dietary Reference Intakes, Healthy Eating Index), perceived mental health (poor versus good), sociodemographics, and smoking. Results: In this sample, 6.9% were food insecure and 4.5% reported poor mental health. Stratified analysis of food security and mental health status by age/gender found associations for poor diet quality, protein, fat, fibre, and several micronutrients (p-values < 0.05); those who were food insecure tended to have higher suboptimal intakes (p-values < 0.05). After adjustment for covariates, associations in relation to mental health emerged for food insecurity (OR = 1.60, 95% CI 1.45–1.71), poor diet quality (1.61, 95% CI 1.34–1.81), and suboptimal intakes of folate (OR = 1.58, 95% CI 1.17–1.90) and iron (OR = 1.45, 95% CI 1.23–1.88). Conclusions: Population approaches that improve food security and intakes of high quality diets may protect people from poor mental health.

Association between household food insecurity and mortality in Canada: a population-based retrospective cohort study

“…Although the link between food insecurity and mental health dis orders is well documented in Canada, 5,15,[18][19][20][21] our finding that severe food insecurity was associated with unintentional injuries and sui cides highlights the urgent need for more effective interventions. Given the prevalence of deaths related to drug poisoning in our sample (results not shown), our finding on unintentional injuries may partly reflect the link between food insecurity and substance use, 49,50 which is often complicated by the coexistence of HIV infec tion and depression.…”

WISH4Campus: Evaluating College Food Insecurity and Promoting Solutions for Student Wellbeing

“…The health of food-insecure students has been previously reported as being fair or poor when compared to food secure students, comparable with our results [26][27][28]30]. This could be attributed to the role access to food and dietary quality play on mental and physical heath [156,162,163,168,170]. Additionally, our study found that academic year of the student influenced food insecurity, with increased food-insecure populations occurring following the freshman year, similar to previous research [26,181,182].…”

“…The risk of food insecurity is affected by socioeconomic status [155,156], ethnicity [157], educational attainment [158], and geographic location [16,159]. Food insecurity has been shown to be associated with inadequate diet [47,[160][161][162], poor health [23,158,163], lower cognitive and academic performance [65,148,[164][165][166], and higher rates of mental health and substance use disorders [163,[167][168][169][170][171].…”

‘Eating to survive’: A qualitative analysis of factors influencing food choice and eating behaviour in a food-insecure population

“…It is a growing problem in the UK, currently estimated to affect 8.4 million people [1]. Previous research has found that food insecurity is robustly associated with poorer diet quality [2][3][4][5], higher levels of obesity (most notably among women in high-income countries) [6], and poor mental health including increased incidence of depression and common mental disorder [7,8].…”