Food Insecurity and Hypoglycemia Among Safety Net Patients With Diabetes

In 2008, 1 in every 7 US households was food insecure, or at risk of going hungry because of an inability to afford food.(1) Food insecurity generally occurs cyclically and episodically, with periods of food adequacy followed by food scarcity; the average food insecure household experiences seven episodes of food scarcity annually.(2) We hypothesized that the cyclic nature of food insecurity, and its associated fluctuations in dietary intake, would predispose patients with diabetes to wide variations in blood glucose levels, including clinically significant hypoglycemia.