The influence of co-residential and non-co-residential living arrangements on sufficient fruit and vegetable consumption
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Open Access
The influence of co-residential and non-coresidential living arrangements on sufficient fruit and vegetable consumption in the aging population in Thailand Sirinya Phulkerd* , Rossarin Soottipong Gray and Aphichat Chamratrithirong
Abstract Background: Living arrangements have an impact on a family’s health-related behaviors, especially its eating behaviors. However, studies that have examined the association between living arrangements and food intake, especially fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption of older adults, are rare. This study aimed to investigate the association between living arrangements and FV consumption in a population of older adults in Thailand from a national sample of households. Methods: This study extracted data on 2048 persons age 60 years or older from a study of a nationallyrepresentative sample of Thai households. The survey asked respondents about FV intake, living arrangements, household size, and socio-demographic characteristics. Binary logistic regression analysis was used to investigate the association between the variables and FV intake. Results: The mean age of the respondents was 68.2 ± 6.5 years. Of the total sample, only 31.9% had sufficient FV intake. The group with the lowest possibility of sufficient FV intake was persons who lived alone. Those who lived with at least one child or lived in a skipped-generation household were 2.7 and 2.2 times as likely to have sufficient FV intake as those who lived alone (p < 0.001 and p < 0.01, respectively). Older adults living only with their spouse were 2.1 times as likely to have sufficient FV intake as those who lived alone. FV intake also differed significantly by socio-demographic characteristics (sex, place of residence, educational attainment, occupation and income), selfrated health, FV knowledge, and exposure to a FV promotion campaign in the community. Conclusions: The findings from this study suggest that a different approach is required to improve FV consumption in the older population by taking into account their living arrangements, community context, level of FV knowledge, and socio-demographic characteristics. The older adults who live alone, as well as those living in a large household, are at particular risk of inadequate FV intake, and require special attention. Keywords: Older adults, Aging, Fruit and vegetable consumption, Living arrangements, Co-residence, Family structure, Household types
* Correspondence: [email protected] Institute for Population and Social Research, Mahidol University, Nakhon Pathom 73170, Thailand © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article
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