Food Insecurity During the Covid-19 Confinement in Ecuador, Estimated by the Latin American and Caribbean Food Security Scale - A Cross-sectional Study

Abstract

Abstract Confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic had strong consequences for the health and nutritional status of the world population. The objective of the present work was to explore food insecurity in a sample of the Ecuadorian population during COVID-19 confinement. The research was a nonexperimental cross-sectional design with 850 partcipants. Data were collected through an online survey from October 2020 to January 2021. Participants were asked about sociodemographic and food security data using the Latin American and Caribbean Food Security Scale. Chi2 and logistic regression analysis were used for hypothesis testing. The main results were that 54% of the participants were insecure about food, this was especially higher among women, indigenous people, montubios, and afro-descendants than mestizos and whites; and it was more prevalent among rural than urban dwellers. It is concluded that food insecurity during pandemic confinement was a problem that affected social groups that is considered vulnerable in different ways.

Keywords

• covid-19, elcsa, ethnicity, indigenous, women, food security.