Healthy food affordability a cardiovascular risk
Living in an area with little ac cess to fresh and nutritious foods has been linked to high heart disease risk, but a new study suggests that it’s the inability to afford a healthy diet, rather than access, that’s to blame.
Researchers studied residents in Atlanta, US, and found that people living in “food deserts“, where there are few places to buy fresh produce and other healthy foods, had more heart risk factors like hardened arteries and inflammation than people with easy access to healthy foods.
But within food-desert neigh borhoods, people with high personal income had fewer heart risk factors than those with low incomes, suggesting it’s money , not access, that prevents some people from having a healthy diet that would lower their heart risk, the study team concludes in `Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes’.
“Food deserts are defined as areas that have below average income together with poor access to healthy foods, ie. lack of grocery stores (within 1.6km in urban and 16km in rural communities),“ lead author Dr Arshed Quyyumi said. “We found that area income, and, even more importantly , personal income was associated with higher cardiovascular risk, and that access to food was not that important a risk,“ added Quyyumi, a cardiologist at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.
Researchers have known that neighbourhood factors are important social determinants of disease outcomes, he added.
For the study , Quyyumi and his colleagues examined data on more than 1,400 adults, averaging about 50 years old. Just under 40% were men and about 37% were African-American.
The researchers collected personal and economic information and performed tests to detect signs of inflammation, elevated blood sugar and blood pressure, as well as arterial stiffness. About 13% of participants lived in areas considered food deserts. These people also had higher rates of smoking, were more likely to have high blood pressure and hardened arteries and to be overweight or obese, compared to those not living in food deserts.
When the study team took average neighborhood income and individual incomes into consideration, they found that people living in food deserts in low-income areas had about the same risk of heart disease as their peers living in low-income areas with good food access.
Meanwhile, high-income individuals in low-income neighborhoods had fewer cardiovascular risk factors compared to their lower-income neighbours, and that was true even when they lived in food deserts.
