Inter‐relationship between Food Security Status, Money Spending, and Availability of Fruits and Vegetables at Home

Food insecurity is a major public health concern due to its negative effects on nutritional health status among adults. However, it is not clear the mechanisms by which food insecurity is associated with poor dietary behaviors and increased risk of excess weight gain among adults. In this study, we investigated the relationships among food security status, money spending behavior and home food environment of households with children using data from the 2009/2010 cycle of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Data was analyzed using R software accounting for the complex study design. We included only 18 years and older participants in the analyses (n= 6,527). Independent t‐test and logistic regression analyses were used to assess the relationships among food security status, money spent on food at supermarket/grocery stores, and availability of fruits and vegetables at home. Food security status was classified as secure if they were fully food secure or marginally food secure, while food insecurity comprised of households having a low or very low food security. Availability of fruits and dark green vegetables at home were also categorized as available (always or most of the time) or unavailable (all other response categories, i.e., sometimes, rarely or never) in the past month. Estimates of mean with the standard error (SE) and, odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence interval (CI), were analyzed. Results indicated that, 14% of households were food insecure. In case of home food environment, 87% had fruits and 79% had dark green vegetables, available at home. After adjusting for participant age, family income to poverty ratio, gender, household size, and ethnicity, food secure household had higher odds of having fruits available at home (OR = 2.4; CI = 1.7–3.3; P = 0.001) or dark green vegetable available at home (OR =1.5; CI =1.2–2.0; P = 0.02) than food insecure households. Overall, the average amount of money spent at supermarket/grocery store over the past 30 days before the survey was $ 411 (± $11). In comparison, food insecure households spent significantly lower amount of money at supermarket/grocery store than their secure counterparts ($368 ± $15 vs. $418 ± 11, respectively‐ P = 0.004). In estimating relationship between money spending at grocery store and availability of fruits and vegetables at home, after controlling for key socio‐demographic variables, it was found that every additional dollar spent on food at supermarket/grocery store was associated with a 0.15% (0.07%, 0.23%) increase in the odds of having fruits at home, and a 0.12% (0.08%, 0.17%) increase in the odds of having dark green vegetables at home. Preliminary results of this study indicates that food insecure households spend less money on food at grocery stores, which in turn, is a strong predictor of poor availability of fruits and dark green vegetables at home.