According to a recent study published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics by Elsevier, women who are food insecure are more likely to report having food addiction symptoms include compulsive consumption of certain foods, making vain attempts to cut back, and withdrawal feelings.
It may be helpful to further investigate addiction mechanisms in order to comprehend how food insecurity and excessive consumption of processed foods are related.
Families who are struggling with hunger frequently have less access to foods that are high in nutrients, such as fruits, vegetables, and lean meats, and more access to cheaper, highly processed foods that are heavy in refined carbohydrates and fats. Highly processed foods have been shown in studies to trigger neuronal reward responses.
“An emerging line of research suggests that highly processed foods can trigger addictive processes that can lead to a compulsive pattern of overeating, with significant physical and mental health consequences. We know that individuals with food insecurity are more likely to live in an environment dominated by these highly processed foods and are more heavily targeted by the food industry,” explains first author Lindsey Parnarouskis, MS, doctoral candidate, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA. “We hypothesized that individuals with food insecurity might be at greater risk for highly processed food addiction, but no one had previously investigated that.”
Data from two past investigations were analyzed again for this study. The Maternal Adiposity, Metabolism and Stress (MAMAS) study examined the effects of an eight-week mindfulness-based intervention on prenatal weight gain in low-income pregnant women in California between August 2011 and June 2013. Participants had a household income that was 500% below the federal poverty level in the US and had a body mass index in the overweight or obese range.
The Family Food Study (FFS), which examined low-income families in Michigan between September 2018 and December 2019, examined the relationships between food insecurity, child weight gain, and maternal weight gain. Participants were female-identified adult caregivers who had kids between the ages of 8 and 10 and a family income that didn’t exceed 200% of the US federal poverty limit.
The US Household Food Security Module was used to gauge food security. It measures how often people experience food insecurity, including how often they worry that they won’t have enough to eat until they have the money to buy more, reduce the amount of their meals, or skip meals altogether because they can’t afford to buy food.
Food addiction was measured by the Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS), a tool that uses substance use disorder criteria from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), adapted to the context of highly processed food. The MAMAS study used the original YFAS based on DSM-IV; the FFS study used a modified version based on DSM-5. Use of different versions of the YFAS as the outcome measure means that these results cannot necessarily be compared meaningfully across samples.
A key strength of the study is that we observed consistent associations across two distinct samples of low-income female adults with a high prevalence of food insecurity. Despite data collected in different geographic regions, at different time periods, and different stages of parenthood or caregiving, the similarity of the associations suggests that this link between food insecurity and food addiction is concerning and deserves further continued investigation.
Cindy W. Leung
There were no appreciable demographic differences between participants in food-secure and food-insecure households, according to the researchers. In all samples, people with food insecurity reported considerably greater symptoms of food addiction than participants with food security.
In MAMAS, pregnant women who lived in food-insecure homes showed 21% greater signs of food addiction than pregnant women who lived in food-secure households. When compared to caregivers in food-secure homes, carers in food-insecure households reported 56% more indications of food addiction.
“A key strength of the study is that we observed consistent associations across two distinct samples of low-income female adults with a high prevalence of food insecurity,” observes lead investigator Cindy W. Leung, ScD, MPH, Assistant Professor of Public Health Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.
“Despite data collected in different geographic regions, at different time periods, and different stages of parenthood or caregiving, the similarity of the associations suggests that this link between food insecurity and food addiction is concerning and deserves further continued investigation.”
Ms. Parnarouskis notes that since this is the first study to report this association, further research is needed to replicate these preliminary findings and test in other samples to generalize to the broader population, particularly because YFAS has not been psychometrically validated in either food-insecure or pregnant individuals.
It’s likely that the endorsement of food addiction symptoms in people who are food insecure is a result of heightened hedonistic cravings for all foods, not only the highly processed ones that are usually associated with food addiction.
In an accompanying editorial, lead author Kara A. Christensen, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV, USA, and coauthors point to the necessity of further qualitative and quantitative testing of measures assessing eating behaviors to validate their use in populations with food insecurity.
They also exhort scientists to collaborate in order to carry out psychometric validations of eating behavior measurements that take into account the intersecting identities that are typical of persons who experience food insecurity.
Dr. Christensen and coauthors emphasize that “considering the reasons that eating behavior measures such as the YFAS could conceivably capture different constructs in people with food insecurity, one must be cautious in interpreting findings using these measures to avoid overpathologizing or misclassifying behaviors.”
“Thus, to advance understanding of maladaptive eating behaviors in these populations and enhance confidence in findings, more psychometric testing of measures is required in populations with food insecurity. Such studies will enhance the field’s ability to understand phenomena related to food insecurity and to draw conclusions that can positively impact public health, nutrition and dietetics, public policy and mental health treatment.”
“If families with low incomes have disproportionate access to food with addictive potential, this represents an important social justice issue, on a par with lack of access to clean water or adequate housing, which needs to be addressed through systemic policy and environmental changes,” Dr. Leung concludes. “We need more research on what mechanisms are driving this association to inform policies to ensure that people have equitable access to nutritious food.”
