Reshma Nair
500668555
Reshma Nair
50066855
GEO 716
Food Insecurity and Its Correlation with Type 2 Diabetes
Reshma Nair
500668555
GEO 716
Professor Sara Edge
Saturday December 8, 2018
Introduction
The prevalence of food insecurity in Canada has increased significantly from 11.3% in 2007-2008 to 12.4% in 2011-2012. This means that at least 1 in 8 household in Canada are food insecure, amounting to a total of 4 million Canadians (Proof Food Policy Research,2018). It is important to set precedence how food insecurity is defined in literature. Therefore, food security is defined as an uncertain, insufficient or inadequate food access, availability and utilization due to constrained financial resources and comprised eating patterns (Tait et al., 2018). Food insecurity has been identified as significant social health problem in Canada (Tait et al., 2018) in which has direct role to the development of chronic diseases like Type 2 diabetes
In Canada, Type 2 diabetes is one of the most prevalent chronic condition that exists and 7th leading cause of mortality (Tait et al., 2018). In the past decade, the prevalence of Type 2 diabetes in Canada has increased by 72%, or with 11 million Canadians currently living with some form of diabetes or pre-diabetes (Tait et al., 2018). Unfortunately, this number is expected to increase to 13.9 million by 2026. Thus, there is an emerging trend seen in these two health variables and how these closely relate to one another. In which similar results from cross-sectional studies have shown that those living with type 2 diabetes have significantly higher prevalence of food insecurity than those without diabetes (Tait el, 2018). Also, similar studies have suggested that individuals who are living in food-insecure households were 2 to 3 times more likely to have diabetes compared to households that were food secure, even after controlling for confounding measures such as income, employment status and lifestyle factors (Tait et al,2018). It is these alarming statistics is the recurring theme that is depicted throughout whole literature review.
Purpose and Rationale
Thus, this literature review aims to bring into the light two seemingly contradictory health concerns that are prevalent in developed countries and how these problems seem surprising to be seem in wealthier nations that are marked with opportunities and chance for growth. Many studies continue to show that there is direct link between socioeconomic status ladder and health. Health is unequally distributed in which people are at the lower end of the ladder are at placed at an increased risk in developing chronic communicable disease compared to people on the higher rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. Our policies, practices, methods and approaches have been discriminating towards those at the lower ends in which there is no source of real action seen from public health agencies and governments. In accordingly, most problems are silent or unaddressed due to politi...
