Articles

People Purchasing Power Influence on the Nutrition Structure and Incidence Rate

Authors:

Mazhaeva T.V.

Abstract:

While the population income is growing, consumer demand for food is also growing. However, consumers begin to pay more attention to the food quality than to its quantity. Besides, in instability times the income is not the only factor effecting nutrition quality. In order to assess the dependence of eating disorders and socially significant diseases growth in the Russian Federation and the Sverdlovsk region on food prices and purchasing power, the author analyzed data on official statistics based on the household budgets survey and data on the population incidence for the period 2010-2015. The study results showed significant deviation differences from the recommended basic food consumption norms in the groups of the Russian Federation subjects with the same buying capacity and the connection lack between two parameters. The lowest deviation percentage from the food consumption norms was in the group of Russian Federation subjects, which had an indicator of population buying capacity above and below the average. The higher the population buying capacity, the greater the imbalance in food consumption. There are differences in consumption of bread and bakery products (p = 0.002), potato (p = 0.007), fruits (p = 0.008), meat (p = 0.004), sugar (p = 0.002), and vegetable oil (p = 0.01) between subjects with high buying capacity and other groups of subjects divided by buying capacity. Positive correlations (p = 0.0001) between population consumption and buying capacity indicate that when prices increase, food consumption does not decrease, but rather grows. Particularly strong jointness is for fruits, meat and fish products. Increased consumption of fruits, eggs, meat, sugar and confectionery products does not affect or impact a little on the expenditure share in the total expenditure structure for food (p < 0.0001). There is a growth in the consumption of basic food products while available resources are increasing by decile groups in the Sverdlovsk region. However, 10% of the population with the greatest available resources have irrational nutrition, which manifests itself as an imbalance towards increasing the share of animal products and easily digestible carbohydrates leading to the risk of obesity and diabetes type 2. The study revealed the following: a) the relationship between the low consumption level of fruits and vegetables in the Russian Federation in 2010 and the prevalence of blood-strokes in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 (R = 0.24; 0.30; 0.27; 0.30, respectively); b) inverse correlation of the obesity (R = –0.32; –0.30; –0.35; –0.29) and anemia (R = –0.27; –0.29; –0.30; –0.30); c) direct dependence of the excess meat consumption and neoplasms and diabetes development (average R = 0.25; p = 0,000). The author established that workers from one of the Serovsky district industrial enterprises in the Sverdlovsk region consumed meat products by 18.2 % more than the population group with the maximum income level, while the consumption workers level of fish and fruit was lower by 51.6 and 35.8 % respectively. 82.4 % of workers of this enterprise had excess body weight, and 28.0 % suffered from different degrees of obesity. Researchers detected carbohydrate metabolism disorder in 21.4 % of total and impaired fat metabolism in 75.0 %. The arterial hypertension (40.4 %) is the most common clinical diagnoses among workers. Ultimately, the author concludes that the behavioral factor instead of income influences the nutrition structure formation.

Keywords:

nutrition; prices on food; buying capacity; incidence rate