Released May 14, 2009
URBANA, Ill. — Food insecurity and childhood obesity appear not to be related, according to an article in the latest issue of The Journal of Nutrition co-authored by a University of Illinois associate professor of agricultural and consumer economics.
"We found no statistically significant relationship between food insecurity and obesity," said Craig Gundersen, who co-authored the article, "Obesity and Food Insecurity in Children—Are They Really Related?" with Steven Garasky and Brenda Lohman of Iowa State University.
The study was based on a sample of 2,516 children from low-income families. Obesity was defined using several different measures and food insecurity is defined as not having the financial means to access enough food for all family members.
"As expected given the sample, a large percentage of the children were from food insecure families and many of the children were obese," said Gundersen. "Despite this, for all our measures of obesity, we found no correlation between the probability of being food insecure and the probability of being obese."
Policymakers have a wide array of tools they use to address both food insecurity and childhood obesity. The concern is that efforts to decrease the incidence of one outcome may cause the incidence of the other outcome to increase. The results from this study demonstrate that negative spillovers are unlikely to occur.
-30-
http://www.aces.uiuc.edu/news/stories/news4789.html
Contacts: Craig Gundersen, (217) 333-2857
Bob Sampson, (217) 244-0225, rsampson@uiuc.edu