Food Insecurity, Meal Behaviors, Beverage Intake, and Body Mass Index in Underserved Adolescents.

Objective: Associations between food insecurity, meal patterns, beverage intake, and body mass index (BMI) were investigated using data from the Howard Meharry Adolescent Caries Study.

Methods: Secondary analyses of food security status used the Wilcoxon rank sum, chi-square, and Fisher's exact tests.

Results: The group of adolescents (n=627) was 42.1% male, 14.2±1.9 years, 86.9% African American, and 19.9% food-insecure. Meal frequency, meal structure, most beverage intake, and BMI did not differ by food-security status. Adolescents from Washington, DC were more likely to be food insecure than adolescents from Nashville, TN (P=0.003). Most had unstructured meal patterns and irregular breakfast intake. Median milk intake was below and sugar-sweetened beverage intake above dietary recommendations.

Conclusions: This study extends our knowledge concerning food insecurity in urban African American adolescents and suggests public health initiatives designed to encourage meal structure, increase milk intake, and reduce sugar-sweetened beverage intake can improve diet quality of underserved youth.