Public Health Nutr. 2026 Jul 20:1-23. doi: 10.1017/S1368980026103218. Online ahead of print.
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: The environments where individuals live can shape their dietary patterns, but research using intersectionality as a context-informed analytic tool to assess associations between neighbourhood deprivation and diet quality is lacking. We therefore examined whether four dimensions of neighbourhood deprivation were independently and/or jointly associated with diet quality among adults in Canada.
DESIGN: We used 24-hour dietary recall data to calculate Healthy Eating Index (HEI-2015) scores to assess diet quality and the 2016 Canadian Marginalization Index (CAN-Marg) to assess four dimensions of neighbourhood deprivation (material resources, immigration/visible minority, age/labour force, and households/dwellings). Weighted linear regression models were used to examine whether these CAN-Marg dimensions were independently and/or jointly associated with diet quality, adjusting for individual, household, and area characteristics.
SETTING: The ten Canadian provinces.
PARTICIPANTS: Adults (≥18 years) who participated in the 2015 Canadian Community Health Survey-Nutrition.
RESULTS: The material resources (β=-0.955, 95% CI=-1.438, -0.471) and immigration/visible minority (β=0.768, 95% CI=0.268, 1.268) dimensions were independently associated with HEI-2015 scores. Significant interactions suggest the associations between living in a neighbourhood with less material resources and lower HEI-2015 scores was stronger in areas with a smaller proportion of recent immigrants/visible minorities (β=0.521, 95% CI=0.174, 0.868) and non-working individuals (β=-0.643, 95% CI=-1.052, -0.234).
CONCLUSION: Neighbourhood material deprivation was not uniformly associated with poor diet quality. This suggests that associations between neighbourhood deprivation and diet quality are not universal, and vary across neighbourhoods with differing immigrant, visible minority, age, and labour force compositions.
PMID:42473825 | DOI:10.1017/S1368980026103218
