ISU to study link between food insecurity and obesity

A new study being done at Idaho State University is looking to see if there’s a connection between food insecurity and obesity.

Erin Rasmussen, a psychology professor at ISU, recently received a $402,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.

Rasmussen said being food impulsive means choosing immediately available meals without any thought to long-term consequences, like weight gain and obesity.

With the study, Rasmussen hoped to look at whether or not food impulsivity is caused by food insecurity.

“Food insecurity is a situation in which a person is very concerned about where their next meal is coming from,” Rasmussen said. “They don’t have consistent and adequate access to nutritious and affordable food.”

Rasmussen said in most countries where poverty is high, the expectation would be to see thinner people because of a lack of nutritious food. But Rasmussen said in America, it’s the opposite.

She said people who are food insecure tend to buy foods that are higher in fat and carbohydrates rather than fruits and vegetables or higher protein foods.

Rasmussen said because of that, she plans to study whether a person’s level of financial difficulty impacts their food choice. Could a lower income lead to more food implusivity, which leads to less nutritious meals?

Rasmussen said she also plans to study a treatment for food insecurity – mindful eating.

“We tend to eat and do other things, we multi-task,” Rasmussen said. “We don’t focus on how much we’re eating, what we’re eating, those sorts of things. Mindful eating is the opposite of that.”

Rasmussen wants to see if mindful eating can be an effective tool to combat impulse and food insecurity.

A graduate student, Luis Rodriquez, who is assisting on the project said this research is important because it can be very eye-opening.

“It’s something that we don’t think about here in Pocatello because we don’t necessarily see that level of poverty that this is associated with,” he said.

Rasmussen said the study will focus primarily on food insecurity in women. Participants in the study will be made up of women in the community.

Rasmussen said it’s a three-year study and they hope to begin the process of data collection in the fall.