The Association Between Food Insecurity and Adverse Health Outcomes in Adults: An Umbrella Review of Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Publisher Pubmed

Summary: Does food insecurity harm adult health? An umbrella review assessed meta-analyses of reported links, highlighting the need to judge how reliable the evidence is. #FoodSecurity #PublicHealth

Moosavian S P ; Awlqadr F H ; Mehrabani S ; Mazinani K ; Hosseini M S ; Hodder S ; Ghoreishy S M ; Jalili F ; Hojjati Kermani M A ; Moradi S
Source: Nutrition Reviews Published:2026

Abstract

Context: An association of food insecurity (FI) with adverse health outcomes (AHOs) has been reported; however, the evidence in this context is still inconclusive. Objective: The certainty and validity of all available meta-analyses were evaluated for the association between FI and AHOs among adults. Data Sources: A comprehensive systematic search was done of the PubMed/MEDLINE, Web of Science, and Scopus databases up to August 20, 2024. Data Extraction: Two researchers independently extracted studies data. Data Analysis: Twenty-one meta-analyses were included in this study. Generally, there was a direct association between FI and 22 AHOs (73.3%) in adults, including the risk of being overweight (odds ratio [OR] = 1.16; 95% CI, 1.06-1.27); binge eating (OR = 1.99; 95% CI, 1.58-2.51); stress (OR = 1.33; 95% CI, 1.24-1.43); anemia (OR = 1.34 95% CI, 1.19-1.50); long sleep duration (OR = 1.14; 95% CI, 1.03-1.26); suicide attempt (OR = 2.23; 95% CI, 1.81-2.76); obesity (OR = 1.42; 95% CI, 1.24-1.63); diabetes (OR = 1.48; 95% CI, 1.32-1.65); hypertension (OR = 1.20; 95% CI, 1.01-1.43); anxiety (OR = 1.61; 95% CI, 1.15-2.25); short sleep duration (OR = 1.14; 95% CI, 1.07-1.21); multimorbidity (OR = 2.17; 95% CI, 1.56-3.03); depression (OR = 2.26; 95% CI, 1.98-2.57); poor sleep quality (OR = 1.45; 95% CI, 1.24-1.70); suicidal ideation (OR = 1.65; 95% CI, 1.48-1.83); having opportunistic infection (OR = 4.09; 95% CI, 2.47-6.78); low CD4 count (OR = 1.38; 95% CI, 1.05-1.80); excessive gestational weight gain (OR = 1.17; 95% CI, 1.05-1.30); prepregnancy overweight (OR = 1.32; 95% CI, 1.12-1.54); prepregnancy obesity (OR = 1.58; 95% CI, 1.37-1.81); and inadequate gestational weight gain (OR = 1.40; 95% CI, 1.21-1.63). We found a significant reverse relation between FI and the risk of complete HIV viral suppression (OR = 0.71; 95% CI, 0.61-0.82). Conclusion: These findings demonstrated that prevention and management programs, which alleviate FI among adults, may also improve public health beyond promoting nutritional status. Systematic Review Registration: PROSPERO registration No. CRD42024582864. © The Author(s) 2025. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Life Sciences Institute. All rights reserved. For commercial re-use, please contact reprints@oup.com for reprints and translation rights for reprints. All other permissions can be obtained through our RightsLink service via the Permissions link on the article page on our site—for further information please contact journals.permissions@oup.com. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/pages/standard-publication-reuse-rights)