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. 2024 Apr 16;10(8):e29489.
doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e29489. eCollection 2024 Apr 30.

Food insecurity and academic performance in Spanish adolescents: Results from the EHDLA study

Edina Maria de Camargo  1 , Sitong Chen  2 , Estela Jiménez-López  3   4 , Desirée Victoria-Montesinos  5 , Lee Smith  6 , José Francisco López-Gil  7
Affiliations

Food insecurity and academic performance in Spanish adolescents: Results from the EHDLA study

Edina Maria de Camargo et al. Heliyon. .

Abstract

Introduction: Food insecurity is a growing global issue that affects both developed and developing nations, and mounting evidence suggests that decreased consumption of healthy foods has been linked to lower academic performance in adolescents. The present study aimed to examine the relationship between food insecurity and academic performance in a sample of Spanish adolescents aged 12-17 years from the Valle de Ricote (Region of Murcia, Spain).

Methods: The present study analyzed data from the Eating Healthy and Daily Life Activities study, which included a sample of 777 adolescents (55.3 % girls). The Spanish Child Food Security Survey Module was used to assess food insecurity, and academic performance was evaluated using school records provided by the schools. Linear regression models (fitted by robust methods) were used to compare the relationships between food insecurity status and academic performance-related indicators.

Results: Adolescents with the highest levels of food insecurity reported the lowest academic performance in language (mean [M] = 4.7; 95 % confidence interval [CI] 3.6 to 5.7), math (M = 4.6; 95 % CI 3.5 to 5.8), foreign language (M = 4.8; 95 % CI 3.8 to 5.8), and grade point average (M = 5.7; 95 % CI 4.9 to 6.5). Conversely, adolescents with the lowest levels of food insecurity reported the highest academic performance in language (M = 6.2; 95 % CI 6.0 to 6.5), math (M = 5.9; 95 % CI 5.5 to 6.2), foreign language (M = 6.2; 95 % CI 5.9 to 6.4), and grade point average (M = 6.7; 95 % CI 6.5 to 6.9) compared to those with higher food security.

Conclusions: Living in a more food-insecure household could explain the lower academic performance of adolescents. Food insecurity should always be on the agenda of public policies. The availability of quality basic food essentials must be ensured in permanently satisfactory quantities without compromising access to other fundamental needs.

Keywords: Adolescence; academic achievement; hunger; socioeconomic status; undernourishment.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Estimated marginal means of academic performance according to the food insecurity status among adolescents. Grade point average computed as the average of the school records of the total number of subjects taken by each participant. Models fitted by robust methods (i.e., "SMDM" [35] method). GPA, grade point average.
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