FOOD INSECURITY AND OVERWEIGHT/OBESITY RISK AMONG CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW AND META-ANALYSIS

Background and Aim: Considerable controversy exists regarding the associations between food insecurity and the risk of childhood and adolescent overweight/obesity (OW/OB). Therefore, a systematic review and meta-analysis was undertaken to examine the association between food insecurity and the risk of childhood and adolescent OW/OB.Methods: Pertinent studies were identified by searching PubMed and EMBASE databases up to March 2018. Data were available from 27 studies, of which 21 studies were cross-sectional and 6 studies were longitudinal. The risk ratio of 129171 individual participants was pooled from seven different countries from these studies for the meta-analysis. The results suggest that there no direct relationship exists between overall food insecurity and OW/OB risk among children and adolescents (OR = 0.99 95% CI: 0.89-1.09). Another noteworthy finding among children (6-12 years) and adolescents in categorized household food security is that low food security (OR = 1.13 95% CI: 1.00-1.26) and very low food security (OR = 1.23 95% CI: 1.00-1.47) increased the risk of OW/OB, but not marginal food security (OR = 1.14 95% CI: 0.83-1.44).Conclusion: It seems that low and very low household food security levels may be associated with higher risks of overweight/obesity among children (6-12 years) and adolescents. Further longitudinal and in-depth qualitative studies with categorized household food insecurity assessment are warranted to support the possible association between household food security levels and the risk of overweight/obesity among children and adolescents

Keywords:

children , adolescents , food insecurity , overweight risk , obesity risk