Climate Trends and Consumption of Foods and Beverages by Processing Level in Mexican Cities

Binge drinking associated with mean temperature: a cross-sectional study among Mexican adults living in cities

BACKGROUND

The association between environmental temperature and alcohol consumption has not been widely explored despite the potential that increasing temperatures could promote the consumption of alcoholic beverages and the alcohol-related burden of disease. We aimed to explore the association between temperature and binge drinking in Mexican adults from urban cities, overall, and by alcoholic beverage type.

METHODS

Data on 10,552 adults ≥ 18 years was obtained from the 2016 National Survey on Drug, Alcohol, and Tobacco Consumption. The mean annual temperature at the municipality was obtained from the Mexican National Weather Service using monthly temperatures from 2015 to 2016. We analyzed binge drinking for all alcoholic beverages in the last year and by type of alcohol as beer, liquor, wine, and coolers. Associations between mean temperature over the past year and binge drinking over the past year among current drinkers were estimated using multilevel Poisson models with robust standard errors adjusted for age, sex, education level, marital status, and household socioeconomic status, with a fixed effect by region.

RESULTS

We observed a non-significant increase in the prevalence of binge drinking for every difference of 1 °C between municipalities of the same region. By alcohol type, a 1 °C increase in mean annual temperature across municipalities of the same region increased the prevalence of beer binge drinking in the past year by 0.9% (PR = 1.009, 95%CI 1.005, 1.013) among beer consumers and the prevalence of coolers' binge drinking by 3.0% (PR = 1.030, 95%CI 1.003, 1.057) in coolers consumers. We observed non-significant results for liquor binge drinking (PR = 1.047, 95%CI 0.994, 1.102) and wine binge drinking (PR = 1.047, 95% 0.944, 1.161).

CONCLUSION

People living in municipalities with higher temperatures reported a higher beer binge drinking in Mexican cities. This could account for 196,000 cases of beer binge drinking in 2016. The context of each country needs to be considered when generalizing these findings, and they need to be further explored with longitudinal data as there might be implications for climate change. If our findings are confirmed given the forecasted rising temperatures, we could expect an increase in binge drinking and therefore, in the alcohol burden of disease.

Influence of food environment on ultra-processed drinks consumption among an economically vulnerable population in a metropolitan area in Brazil: A multilevel analysis

Ultra-processed drinks (UPDs) consumption is increasing, and this intake has been associated with the risk of illness and death. Data on individuals (n = 430) and food stores (n = 231) were collected in an economically vulnerable area in Recife-Brazil, and multilevel regression models were applied to assess the association between UPDs consumption with food environment characteristics. The results show 29.5% of individuals consume UPDs, higher UPD consumption was significantly associated with age (OR: 0.96), lower educational levels (OR:2.06), high density of stores predominantly selling UPFs (OR:2.34) and lower availability of FV in stores (OR:0.49). The applied methodology can inform food environment interventions to reduce UPDs consumption.