Intermittent Water Supply and Beverage Consumption Patterns among Adolescents and Adults in Mexico: A Nationally Representative, Cross-Sectional Analysis.

Background: Given increasing water scarcity, water is managed by providing an intermittent water supply (IWS) to residents. Ethnographic findings have shown that residents with IWS have limited access to drinking water and may increase the consumption of highly processed, industrialized beverages.

Objectives: We examined whether the frequency of water supply is associated with beverage consumption patterns.

Methods: We used beverage items from the food frequency and household questionnaires from Mexico's 2022 Encuesta Nacional de Salud y Nutrición. Latent class analysis (LCA) was used to identify beverage consumption patterns. Survey-weighted bivariate analysis and multinomial regression (adjusted for demographic variables) quantified the relationship between the frequency of water supply and beverage consumption patterns.

Results: LCA classified individuals into 1 of 3 beverage consumption patterns: those who, relative to other beverages, have higher consumption of plain water (48.4%); industrialized beverages (26.0%); or beverages prepared at home (25.5%). The frequency of water supply and beverage consumption patterns was significantly associated (crude P = 0.033). People with daily intermittency followed beverage consumption patterns that featured more industrialized beverages than plain water, compared with those who had a daily 24/7 water supply. Among those with daily intermittency, 40.6% followed the plain water beverage pattern, 37.3% the industrialized beverage pattern, and 22.1% the prepared at home beverage pattern. In contrast, among those with a daily 24/7 water supply, 49.9% followed the plain water beverage pattern, 21.7% the industrialized beverage pattern, and 28.4% the prepared at home beverage pattern. In adjusted analysis, people with daily intermittency were more likely to exhibit the industrialized compared with the plain water beverage pattern (odds ratio = 2.23, 95% confidence interval: 1.14, 4.35), compared with those who receive water 24/7. Receiving water less than daily was not significantly associated with beverage consumption patterns.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest an association between IWS and consumption of industrialized beverages, and thus its potential contribution to chronic disease risk.