{"title":"Nutrition status among adults in the face of household food insecurity: a cross-sectional study in five different regions in senegal.","authors":"Babatunde Owolodun, Sonja Merten","doi":"10.1186/s40066-026-00643-7","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Household food insecurity remains a critical public health issue in low- and middle-income countries, contributing to undernutrition and overweight. Senegal is undergoing a nutrition transition, with regions experiencing varying degrees of food insecurity and nutritional outcomes. This study examines the association between household food insecurity and adult nutritional status across five ecologically distinct regions of Senegal.</p><p><strong>Method: </strong>A cross-sectional study was conducted from April to June 2024 involving 1,965 adults from 1,253 households in Boundou, Bedik/Bandafassi, Senegal River Valley, Lower Casamance, and Dakar regions. Household food insecurity was assessed using the validated Household Food Insecurity Access Scale, while body mass index (BMI) was calculated from measured weight and height. Associations between food insecurity, socioeconomic factors, and BMI categories were analyzed using multilevel ordinal logistic regression with region-stratified analyses conducted to evaluate context-specific relationships.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Findings revealed significant geographic variation in food security and nutritional outcomes. Over 50% of households in Boundou and Bedik/Bandafassi were severely food insecure, while Lower Casamance had the highest food security levels. Underweight was most prevalent in food-insecure rural regions like Boundou, whereas overweight and obesity were concentrated in urban areas like Dakar and Lower Casamance. Food insecurity was significantly associated with higher BMI in Boundou and overweight in Dakar, supporting the food insecurity-obesity hypothesis. However, no significant association emerged between food insecurity and underweight in the overall model, suggesting that broader ecological and health-related factors may drive undernutrition.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>The study highlighted the context-specific and regionally differentiated relationships between food insecurity and nutritional status in Senegal. These findings underscore the need for locally tailored, multisectoral interventions that address the dual burden of malnutrition by improving both food access and diet quality.</p><p><strong>Supplementary information: </strong>The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40066-026-00643-7.</p>","PeriodicalId":55858,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Food Security","volume":"15 1","pages":"62"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4000,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13493398/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Agriculture and Food Security","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s40066-026-00643-7","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2026/6/14 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"Agricultural and Biological Sciences","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background: Household food insecurity remains a critical public health issue in low- and middle-income countries, contributing to undernutrition and overweight. Senegal is undergoing a nutrition transition, with regions experiencing varying degrees of food insecurity and nutritional outcomes. This study examines the association between household food insecurity and adult nutritional status across five ecologically distinct regions of Senegal.
Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted from April to June 2024 involving 1,965 adults from 1,253 households in Boundou, Bedik/Bandafassi, Senegal River Valley, Lower Casamance, and Dakar regions. Household food insecurity was assessed using the validated Household Food Insecurity Access Scale, while body mass index (BMI) was calculated from measured weight and height. Associations between food insecurity, socioeconomic factors, and BMI categories were analyzed using multilevel ordinal logistic regression with region-stratified analyses conducted to evaluate context-specific relationships.
Results: Findings revealed significant geographic variation in food security and nutritional outcomes. Over 50% of households in Boundou and Bedik/Bandafassi were severely food insecure, while Lower Casamance had the highest food security levels. Underweight was most prevalent in food-insecure rural regions like Boundou, whereas overweight and obesity were concentrated in urban areas like Dakar and Lower Casamance. Food insecurity was significantly associated with higher BMI in Boundou and overweight in Dakar, supporting the food insecurity-obesity hypothesis. However, no significant association emerged between food insecurity and underweight in the overall model, suggesting that broader ecological and health-related factors may drive undernutrition.
Conclusion: The study highlighted the context-specific and regionally differentiated relationships between food insecurity and nutritional status in Senegal. These findings underscore the need for locally tailored, multisectoral interventions that address the dual burden of malnutrition by improving both food access and diet quality.
Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40066-026-00643-7.
期刊介绍：
Agriculture & Food Security is a peer-reviewed open access journal that addresses the challenge of global food security. It publishes articles within the field of food security research, with a particular focus on research that may inform more sustainable agriculture and food systems that better address local, regional, national and/or global food and nutritional insecurity. The journal considers cutting-edge contributions across the breadth of relevant academic disciplines, including agricultural, ecological, environmental, nutritional, and socio-economic sciences, public health and policy. The scope of the journal includes, but is not limited to: -Agricultural and environmental sciences, including genetics and systems ecology- Animal husbandry, fisheries science and plant science- Global change, biodiversity, climatology and abiotic stresses- Food technology and balancing agricultural outputs across food, feed, fibre and fuel- Economics, information sciences and decision theory- Strategies for the implementation of new policies and practices- Public health in relation to the condition of food and nutritional security. The pioneering advances in research reported in Agriculture & Food Security have far reaching implications both for the developing world and for sustainability in the developed world. The published articles are accessible not only to researchers, but are also of special interest to the wider community of farmers, development and public health workers, policy makers and the general public.
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