Food Insecurity and childhood obesity: unpacking the potential nutritional and psychological mechanisms.

Food insecurity refers to the ‘inability to obtain adequate quality or sufficient quantity of food in socially acceptable ways, or the uncertainty that one will be able to do so’. Rates of food insecurity have dramatically increased in the UK in recent years; with 17% of households experiencing moderate or severe food insecurity in 2023, compared to 7.3% in 2022 (1). Rates are higher in households with children, with 23.4% of households experiencing food insecurity in 2023 (1). Furthermore, the situation is worse for families living in the North of England, with rates of food insecurity higher (ranged from 20.6-27.8%) compared to the rest of England (14.1-17.7%) (1).

Food insecurity is linked to poorer dietary intake and health outcomes, especially among children, with an increased risk of developing obesity in later life (2,3). However, the mechanisms underlying these relationships are unclear. To date, there has been a lack of research conducted in children examining the potential nutritional and psychological mechanisms to explain why children experiencing food insecurity are at greater risk of developing overweight and obesity. Furthermore, less is understood about the psychological, socioeconomic and environmental predictors of families experiencing food insecurity among UK populations with research predominantly conducted in North American samples.

The Born in Bradford (BiB) cohort is an ideal dataset to address the aims of this research as the cohort are socioeconomically and ethnically diverse, with rates of food insecurity in Bradford amongst the highest in England (~20%). In addition, the BiB families have provided repeated information about their socioeconomic position, environments, dietary intake, children’s growth, food insecurity status, and psychological wellbeing. Utilising this wealth of rich data, this project aims to address current gaps in the evidence base by: 1) exploring the psychological (e.g. maternal wellbeing, existing mental health issues), socioeconomic (i.e. income, education, etc.) and environmental (i.e. neighbourhood deprivation, etc.) that are associated with food insecurity status and whether these differ by ethnicity, and 2) examining whether the relationship between food insecurity and child weight is acting partly via effects on child psychological wellbeing and dietary intake.