| Abstract
Aim: The main objective of the present study was to evaluate the association between obesity and food security status.
The sample comprised of Iranian adults with an age range of 15–64 years.
Methods: In this cross-sectional study (n = 1277), the short form of the Household Food Security Scale was used to
determine food security status. Height, weight and waist and hip circumferences were measured, and body mass
index, waist-to-hip ratio, waist-to-height ratio and conicity index (CI) were also calculated. One-way analysis of variance
and logistic regression were used for statistical analyses.
Results: There were no statistically significant differences in the mean anthropometric measurements of males and
females with different food security status (P > 0.05). After adjusting for covariates, there was no statistically significant
association between food security status and anthropometric measurements in men. However, the low foodsecure
females were 72% more likely to be overweight in comparison with very low food-secure women (P = 0.04).
Moreover, food-secure females were 32% less likely to have CI >1.25 compared with very low food-secure
females (P = 0.04).
Conclusions: The results showed that there is an association between food insecurity and overweight, which is consistent
with the finding of prior researches. In addition, for the first time, we showed the significant association
between low food security and CI. |