Cost of healthy foods linked to heart risks
Living in an area with little access 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 Atlanta residents 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 neighbourhoods, 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 mile in urban and 10 miles in rural communities),” lead author Arshed Quyyumi told Reuters Health in an email.
“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,” said 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, and living in the Atlanta metropolitan area. Just under 40 per cent were men and about 37 per cent were African American.