A Review of the Relationship between Obesity and Food Insecurity

Introduction: Food insecurity refers to the limited or unreliable access to sufficient quantity and quality of food or the restricted opportunities to obtain food through socially approved ways which turning into the major health concern , has been the cause of so many chronic diseases such as obesity. Methods: To achieve the present study’s objectives certain data bases as google scholar, Science Direct, PubMed , Scopus, Ovid, Eric, CINAHL, EMBASE, Cochrane Library and PsychInfo concurrent with the key words "food insecurity", "food hardship", , "hunger", " food security ", "obesity", "race","minority",poverty " ," food assistance " and also various other related words and phrases have comprehensively been searched since 1995 till 2016. The main criterions for the articles to be enlisted in the study were availability of the full text, English standing as the source language of the article, and the publication date being between 1995 and 2016. Results: Food insecurity and the obesity prevalence among the members of the families strongly depend on certain factors as the age, sex, marital status, stressors, income levels, ethnicity and race. After reviewing the articles enlisted in the current study regarding the risk of obesity among various age and sex groups, diverse results were obtained. Conclusion: Due to similar affecting agents on the emerge of food insecurity and the obesity prevalence, there seems to exist direct associations between food insecurity and the obesity which could be obviously recognized among most of the age and gender groups.