Living with smokers linked to lack of food

NEW YORK, Nov. 4 (UPI) -- Children and adults living with adult smokers appear less likely than others to have daily access to enough healthy food, U.S. researchers said.

Dr. Cynthia Cutler-Triggs of the New York University School of Medicine and Bellevue Hospital Center and colleagues analyzed 8,817 households with children age 17 and younger from 1999 to 2002 to see what factors affected food insecurity.

"Food insecurity is the inability to access enough food in a socially acceptable way for every day of the year," Cutler-Triggs said in a statement.

At least one smoker lived in 23 percent of the children's households "and 32 percent of children in low-income households lived with a smoker compared with 15 percent of those in more affluent households."

The study, published in the journal Pediatrics, found that among children in households with smokers, 17 percent were food insecure vs. 8.7 percent in households without smokers.

For adults, 25.7 percent in households with smokers and 11.6 percent in households without smokers were food insecure, and rates of severe food insecurity were 11.8 percent and 3.9 percent, respectively.