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Freiria et al.

household. In the United States, data from the report The State of Senior Hunger in 2020 showed that among the older
adults who fell below the poverty line, 38.2% had food insecurity (Ziliak and Gundersen, 2022).
It is important to highlight that in Brazil, 70.6% of older adults contribute to the family income, of which 62.5% help
the family through their retirement income, a fact of great relevance nowadays, since the premature death of older adults
by COVID-19 would have a high impact on the income of several Brazilian families, increasing the number of families
falling below the poverty line (Camarano, 2020).
In Brazil, to attenuate the situation of food insecurity, the government provides some social security programs such
as cash transfer programs, family agriculture food acquisition programs, and popular restaurants (places that offer lunch
and dinner at a low cost, but only in specific regions). However, despite benefiting older adults, none of these programs
were designed considering their specific needs. As mentioned by Lima-Costa et al. (2022), Brazil has undergone a
period of important cuts in social security and health program investments in the past 4 years, including the extinction
of the National Council for Food and Nutrition Security (in Portuguese, Conselho Nacional de Segurança Alimentar e
Nutricional – CONSEA), an important institution that fought against food insecurity in Brazil. The extinction of the
council reduced the articulation of society within the federal, state, and municipal government spheres, diminishing
actions and programs that help food insecure individuals and may have a greatly negative impact in the short-term
(Ribeiro-Silva, Pereira, Campello, et al., 2020).
Another factor that presented a high association with food insecurity in our study was self-reported ethnicity, showing
that African American individuals had a 48% higher chance of having food insecurity compared to Caucasian. The same was
observed in another study in the United States, in which African American older adults have a food insecurity rate close to 4 times
that of Caucasian individuals (Ziliak and Gundersen, 2022) and in Canada, in which older adults who declared themselves non-
white had a higher chance of having food insecurity (OR: 2.49; P < 0.001) (Leroux, Morrison, and Rosenberg, 2018).
In our study, some other factors shown in the literature as being associated with food insecurity, such as level of
education, marital status, sex, current work, marital status, and being the head of the household, did not maintain a
significant association in the final regression model. This demonstrates the importance of performing this type of research
in different locations and analyzing other aspects (e.g., social support) in addition to those already described to better
understand the sociodemographic factors associated with food insecurity in aging.
Although our study presents great potential for analyzing a sample of community-dwelling older adults who attend
primary health care units, and, to the best of our knowledge, it is the first study to analyze the association between social
support and food insecurity among older adults in Brazil, we must consider some limitations. The cross-sectional design
did not allow inferences of cause and effect between the study variables. In addition, this study was limited to only
community-dwelling older adults, making it difficult to generalize the results to other populations. Another important
limitation is that we included only individuals registered in the Family Health Strategy program, so caution should be
taken when generalizing the results to all older adults.
5. Conclusions

Our results highlight the important association between food insecurity and markers of social inequality as well as social
determinants in health, especially social support. Considering these, our study presents important contributions to the
practice in primary health-care units because stimulating social interaction and support may be a low-cost intervention
capable of reducing the chances of food insecurity among older adults. Finally, our results highlight the importance of
screening for food insecurity among older adults to prevent potential health problems related to this parameter.

Acknowledgments
None.

Funding
This work was supported by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (study number:
408262/2017-6) and was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil
(CAPES) – Finance Code 001.

Conflict of Interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

International Journal of Population Studies | 2021, Volume 7, Issue 1 47