Food and nutrition insecurity among families with children under five years of age in the metropolitan region of joão pessoa, paraíba, brazil

Abstract

The scope of this article is to evaluate the food and nutrition insecurity of families with children under five years of age residing in municipalities of the Metropolitan Region of João Pessoa; its association with biological characteris-tics; the health status of the children and the family socioeconomic context. It is a cross-sectional study with families attended in the Family Health Strategy. Food and nutritional security were eval-uated by the Brazilian Food Insecurity Scale. The association of moderate/severe food and nutrition insecurity with socioeconomic and child charac-teristics was studied using Multivariate Logistic Regression. The prevalence of food and nutrition insecurity was found in 63.9% of families, the moderate/severe forms being predominant. Families whose children had diarrhea in the last month, where mothers indicated that they were unable to read/write/do accounts, among beneficiaries of the Bolsa Família Program and with <2 minimum wages per capita family income, pre-sented higher prevalence of moderate/severe food and nutrition insecurity. The high vulnerability of the families observed, especially the beneficiaries of Bolsa Família, is reflected in more severe de-grees of food and nutrition insecurity associated with socioeconomic factors.