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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Melissa BatesonORCiD, Dr Courtney Neal, Dr Oliver ShannonORCiD, Professor Daniel Nettle
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2026 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Food insecurity (FI) is associated with negative affective states such as depression. FI involves distinctive patterns of dietary intake, and recent evidence suggests that dietary intake affects affective state. Dietary variables may therefore represent an important pathway linking FI to poor mental health. In two cross-sectional datasets (one from the UK, n = 394, and NHANES 2017-18 from the USA, n = 4011), we examined: associations between FI and affective state; between FI and dietary patterns; between dietary patterns and affective state; and the statistical mediation of the FI-affective state association by dietary patterns. In both datasets, FI was associated with a more negative affective state, greater meal irregularity, and reduced dietary diversity; lower dietary diversity was associated with a more negative affective state. Other FI-diet and diet-affective state associations were inconsistent across datasets. Dietary variables partially mediated the FI-affective state association in both datasets, accounting for 23% and 6% of the total association respectively, with dietary diversity the only individually significant mediator. These findings suggest that while reduced dietary diversity partially explains the association between FI and outcomes such as depression, neither it nor other dietary variables account for the greater part of this relationship.
Author(s): Bateson M, Neal C, Shannon O, Nettle D
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Appetite
Year: 2026
Volume: 226
Print publication date: 01/11/2026
Online publication date: 24/06/2026
Acceptance date: 23/06/2026
Date deposited: 15/07/2026
ISSN (print): 0195-6663
ISSN (electronic): 1095-8304
Publisher: Academic Press
URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2026.108696
DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2026.108696
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