Exposure to food deserts and food consumption markers among children registered in SISVAN

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between exposure to food deserts and food consumption markers among school-aged children monitored in the Brazilian Food and Nutritional Surveillance System (SISVAN). Microdata from 63,426 children from 1,655 municipalities in 2016 were used for healthy and unhealthy food consumption markers, in addition to the variables ‘absence of consumption of in natura foods’ and ‘maximum consumption of ultra-processed foods’. The classification of municipalities in food deserts was based on the density of healthy food retail stores. Poisson regression models with robust variance and adjusted for individual and municipal characteristics were used to estimate prevalence ratios (PR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) for the occurrence of food markers according to exposure to food deserts. The presence of food deserts was associated with worse municipal rankings of human development and inequality. There was an association between exposure to food deserts and a higher frequency of absence of consumption of in natura foods (PR: 1.15, 95% CI: 1.07, 1.24) and maximum consumption of ultra-processed foods (PR: 1.07, 95% CI: 1.02, 1.24). Exposure to food deserts was associated with the profile of food consumption markers in school-aged children monitored in SISVAN.