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Article

Nutrient Intake of Food Bank Users Is Related to Frequency of Food Bank Use, Household Size, Smoking, Education and Country of Birth¹

Linda Jacobs Starkey², Katherine Gray-Donald and Harriet V. Kuhnlein^*

School of Dietetics and Human Nutrition and ^* Centre for Indigenous Peoples' Nutrition and Environment, McGill University, Macdonald Campus, Quebec H9X 3V9 and Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McGill University, Montreal

²To whom correspondence should be addressed.

The number of individuals and families accessing food assistance programs has continued to grow throughout the 1990s. Despite the increased health risk among low-income people, few studies have addressed nutrient intake throughout the month or at the end of the month when food and financial resources are thought to be compromised, and no study has described dietary status of a random sample of food bank users. Nutrient intakes of adult female and male food bank users in metropolitan Montreal, Quebec, Canada, were monitored week-by-week over a month by dietitian-administered 24-h recall interviews. A total of 428 participants from a stratified random sample of 57 urban area food banks completed all four interviews. Mean energy intake, as an indicator of diet quantity, was similar to other adult populations (10.2 ± 4.8 and 7.9 ± 3.6 MJ for men and women, respectively, age 18–49 y) and not related to sociodemographic variables except the expected biological variation of age and sex. Macronutrient intake was stable throughout the month. Overall median intakes of calcium, vitamin A, and zinc were below recommended levels for all age and sex groups. Intakes of several micronutrients were related to frequency of food bank use, household size, smoking, education, and country of birth. High nutrient intake variability characterized these adult food bank users.

KEY WORDS: • food security and nutrient intake • urban food banks and nutrition • urban food security • food bank users' nutrient intake • food bank users' diet

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