The influence of co-residential and non-co-residential living arrangements on sufficient fruit and vegetable consumption in the aging population in Thailand

Living arrangements have an impact on a family's health-related behaviors, especially its eating behaviors. However, studies that have examined the association between living arrangements and food intake, especially fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption of older adults, are rare. This study aimed to investigate the association between living arrangements and FV consumption in a population of older adults in Thailand from a national sample of households. This study extracted data on 2048 persons age 60 years or older from a study of a nationally-representative sample of Thai households. The survey asked respondents about FV intake, living arrangements, household size, and socio-demographic characteristics. Binary logistic regression analysis was used to investigate the association between the variables and FV intake. The mean age of the respondents was 68.2 ± 6.5 years. Of the total sample, only 31.9% had sufficient FV intake. The group with the lowest possibility of sufficient FV intake was persons who lived alone. Those who lived with at least one child or lived in a skipped-generation household were 2.7 and 2.2 times as likely to have sufficient FV intake as those who lived alone (p