Household Food Security and Consumption of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages among New York City (NYC) Children: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of 2017 NYC Kids’ Data

Abstract

Food insecurity is a stressor associated with adverse health outcomes, including the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs). Our study tests the hypothesis that other socioeconomic vulnerabilities may magnify this effect using cross-sectional data from the 2017 New York City (NYC) Kids Survey. Households providing an affirmative response to one or both food security screener questions developed by the US Department of Agriculture were coded as households with low food security. The number of sodas plus other SSBs consumed was standardized per day and categorized as 1 = none, 2 = less than one, and 3 = one or more. We tested the joint effect of low food security with chronic hardship, receipt of federal aid, and immigrant head of household on a sample of n = 2362 kids attending kindergarten and beyond using ordinal logistic regression and accounting for the complex survey design. Only having a US-born parent substantially magnified the effect of low household food security on SSB consumption (OR = 4.2, 95%CI: 2.9–6.3, p < 0.001) compared to the reference group of high household food security with an immigrant parent. The effect of low food security on SSB consumption among NYC children warrants intersectional approaches, especially to elucidate US-based SSB norms in low-food-security settings.