Relationship Between Food Insecurity and Poor Cardiovascular Health in Korean Adults

The association between food insecurity and cardiovascular health (CVH) in Korean adults remains unclear. This study aimed to investigate the association between food insecurity and CVH in Korean adults.

This study included 14,034 adults aged ≥19 years in the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2019-2021. CVH was defined using the American Heart Association's Life's Simple 7 framework, including smoking status, physical activity, diet, body mass index, total cholesterol, blood pressure, and fasting glucose. Participants were categorized into the food secure or food insecure group based on their survey scores. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was performed to calculate the association between food insecurity and poor CVH.

Among the participants, 4.0% belonged to the food insecure group and 96.0% belonged to the food secure group, and 15.3%, 61.4%, and 23.3% of the participants had ideal, intermediate, and poor CVH, respectively. In the multivariate analysis, the odds ratio (95% confidence interval) for poor CVH was 1.32 (1.06-1.64) in food insecure group compared to food secure group. The odds for poor CVH increased as food security status aggravated (p for trend <0.05). Moreover, food insecure group had higher odds of poor status in the following CVH components: smoking and blood pressure.

Food insecurity is associated with poor CVH in Korean adults. Specifically, it is associated with current smoking and high blood pressure. Improving food insecurity may help prevent poor CVH in Korea.