•Food insecurity ranges from 48% to 89% among U.S. food pantry clients.•Dietary quality among U.S. food pantry users is extremely low.•U.S. food pantry users do not achieve intake recommendations for ...16 key nutrients.•Obesity, diabetes, and heart conditions are prevalent in U.S. food pantry clients.•Food pantry interventions improved food security, weight, and diabetic control.
Food pantries are community-based organizations that provide food to prevalently low and very low food secure households, presenting an opportune point of contact and potential site for interventions. This review evaluates the food security, dietary quality, dietary intake and health outcomes of U.S. adults served by food pantries and the potential for interventions based in food pantries to improve these outcomes. Results from the 15 included studies showed the prevalence of food insecurity and very low food security among food pantry clients was higher than national estimates at up to 89% and 52%, respectively; dietary quality was up to 20 points lower on the Healthy Eating Index compared with U.S. adults; intake for 16 nutrients did not meet the Estimated Average Requirement or exceed the Average Intake for 30% to 100% of clients; and a strikingly high prevalence of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and related conditions, and depressive symptoms were present among U.S. food pantry users. Interventions in food pantries have been successful in improving food security, weight and diabetic control but not dietary quality or intake. However, these few interventions hold promise and present a need for further research investment to address food security, dietary intake and health outcomes among food pantry clients.
Purpose of Review
This review examines the current epidemiological evidence for the relationship between levels of food insecurity and cardiovascular disease (CVD) outcomes among US adults > 17 ...years.
Recent Findings
Review of recent literature revealed that reduced food security was associated with decreased likelihood of good self-reported cardiovascular health and higher odds of reporting CVD-related outcomes such as coronary heart disease, angina, heart attack, peripheral arterial disease, and hypertension.
Summary
Existing evidence suggests a compelling association between each level of reduced food security and CVD risk with a particularly strong association between very low food security and CVD risk. Policies and public health-based strategies are needed to identify the most vulnerable subgroups, strengthen and enhance access to food assistance programs, and promote awareness and access to healthful foods and beverages to improve food security, nutrition, and cardiovascular health.
Type 2 diabetes is a major public health concern. Management of this condition has focused on behavior modification through diet and exercise interventions. A growing body of evidence has focused on ...temporality of dietary intake and exercise and potential effects on health. This review summarizes current literature that investigates the question "how does the timing of exercise relative to eating throughout the day effect postprandial response in adults?" Databases PubMed, Scopus, Cochrane Library, CINAHL, and SPORTDiscus were searched between March-May 2019. Experimental studies conducted in healthy adults (≥18 y) and those with type 2 diabetes were included. Full texts were examined by at least two independent reviewers. Twenty studies with a total of 352 participants met the inclusion criteria. The primary finding supports that exercise performed post-meal regardless of time of day had a beneficial impact on postprandial glycemia. There was insufficient evidence regarding whether timing of exercise performed pre- vs. post-meal or vice versa in a day is related to improved postprandial glycemic response due to inherent differences between studies. Future studies focusing on the investigation of timing and occurrence of meal intake and exercise throughout the day are needed to inform whether there is, and what is, an optimal time for these behaviors regarding long-term health outcomes.
We estimate nutrient intake from diet and total sources including dietary supplements (DS), and dietary quality of low‐income U.S. older adults (60+ years) using the 2007–2016 National Health and ...Nutrition Examination Survey. We apply the National Cancer Institute method to determine usual/habitual nutrient intake distributions. Our results reveal that low‐income older adults have poor nutrient intake and dietary quality. DS use reduces the risk of nutrient inadequacy but is not associated with statistically significantly better dietary quality. Future policies that would change access to nutrients through DS should consider the current DS contributions to nutrient intake among the low‐income, older population.
Food classification serves as the basic step of image-based dietary assessment to predict the types of foods in each input image. However, foods in real-world scenarios are typically long-tail ...distributed, where a small number of food types are consumed more frequently than others, which causes a severe class imbalance issue and hinders the overall performance. In addition, none of the existing long-tailed classification methods focus on food data, which can be more challenging due to the inter-class similarity and intra-class diversity between food images. In this work, two new benchmark datasets for long-tailed food classification are introduced, including Food101-LT and VFN-LT, where the number of samples in VFN-LT exhibits real-world long-tailed food distribution. Then, a novel two-phase framework is proposed to address the problem of class imbalance by (1) undersampling the head classes to remove redundant samples along with maintaining the learned information through knowledge distillation and (2) oversampling the tail classes by performing visually aware data augmentation. By comparing our method with existing state-of-the-art long-tailed classification methods, we show the effectiveness of the proposed framework, which obtains the best performance on both Food101-LT and VFN-LT datasets. The results demonstrate the potential to apply the proposed method to related real-life applications.
In 2020, an estimated 10.5% of US households were food insecure, which refers to not having access at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life.1 Certain groups were disproportionately ...affected, including households with children, Black and Hispanic households, and households with income below 185% of the poverty threshold.1 Food insecurity is a known risk factor for poor nutrition and chronic disease burden and is conceptualized to have an impact on health through various levels and sources of factors (Figure 1 ).2,3 For example, less money may constrict resources allocated to food, health care, housing, and other basic needs, all of which could ultimately influence health outcomes.
The objective of this study was to estimate the prevalence of use and types of dietary supplements (DS) used by U.S. adults (≥19 years) by sociodemographic characteristics: family income-to-poverty ...ratio (PIR), food security status, and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participation using NHANES 2011⁻2014 data (
= 11,024). DS use was ascertained via a home inventory and a retrospective 30-day questionnaire. Demographic and socioeconomic differences related to DS use were evaluated using a univariate
statistic. Half of U.S. adults (52%) took at least one DS during a 30-day period; multivitamin-mineral (MVM) products were the most commonly used (31%). DS and MVM use was significantly higher among those with a household income of ≥ 350% of the poverty level, those who were food secure, and SNAP income-ineligible nonparticipants across all sex, age, and race/ethnic groups. Among women, prevalence of use significantly differed between SNAP participants (39%) and SNAP income-eligible nonparticipants (54%). Older adults (71+ years) remained the highest consumers of DS, specifically among the highest income group (82%), while younger adults (19⁻30 years), predominantly in the lowest income group (28%), were the lowest consumers. Among U.S. adults, DS use and the types of products consumed varied with income, food security, and SNAP participation.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program-Education (SNAP-Ed) is the nutrition promotion component of SNAP, formerly known as food stamps. SNAP-Ed assists low-income populations in the United ...States improve dietary intake and reduce food insecurity through nutrition education. This narrative review summarizes current investigations of SNAP-Ed's effectiveness at improving food security and dietary outcomes, and it can help inform future policy and implementation of the program. There was stronger evidence for SNAP-Ed as an effective means of improving food security (n = 4 reports) than for its effects on nutrition or dietary outcomes (n = 10 reports). Inconsistency in measurement tools and outcomes and a lack of strong study designs characterized the studies that sought to evaluate the effectiveness of SNAP-Ed at improving nutrition or dietary outcomes. Additional rigorous study designs in diverse population groups are needed to strengthen the evidence. In the face of reduced financial SNAP benefits, SNAP-Ed may play an important role in helping to eliminate food insecurity and improve dietary outcomes and, ultimately, the health of low-income Americans.
Abstract Food-insecure pregnant females may be at greater risk of iron deficiency (ID) because nutrition needs increase and more resources are needed to secure food during pregnancy. This may result ...in a higher risk of infant low birth weight and possibly cognitive impairment in the neonate. The relationships of food insecurity and poverty income ratio (PIR) with iron intake and ID among pregnant females in the United States were investigated using National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999-2010 data (n=1,045). Food security status was classified using the US Food Security Survey Module. One 24-hour dietary recall and a 30-day supplement recall were used to assess iron intake. Ferritin, soluble transferrin receptor, or total body iron classified ID. Difference of supplement intake prevalence, difference in mean iron intake, and association of ID and food security status or PIR were assessed using χ2 analysis, Student t test, and logistic regression analysis (adjusted for age, race, survey year, PIR/food security status, education, parity, trimester, smoking, C-reactive protein level, and health insurance coverage), respectively. Mean dietary iron intake was similar among groups. Mean supplemental and total iron intake were lower, whereas odds of ID, classified by ferritin status, were 2.90 times higher for food-insecure pregnant females compared with food-secure pregnant females. Other indicators of ID were not associated with food security status. PIR was not associated with iron intake or ID. Food insecurity status may be a better indicator compared with income status to identify populations at whom to direct interventions aimed at improving access and education regarding iron-rich foods and supplements.
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