In a Turkish survey, tight food budgets didn't predict diet quality. Being a man did

It seems obvious that when money for food gets tight, diet quality slips. Many studies, mostly in the United States, have found exactly that. A new survey from Türkiye didn't, and its clearest pattern came from somewhere else: men.

Researchers asked 808 adults about food access, eating habits, exercise, sleep and smoking. After accounting for age, income, education, sex and body size, worry about having enough food was not linked to diet quality or to an overall heart-health habits score.

The setup

Tuba Tekin and Nurcan Bağlam of the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics at Sivas Cumhuriyet University ran an online questionnaire shared through social media groups, e-mail lists and community networks. Adults with long-term health conditions and pregnant or breastfeeding women were excluded.

Participants averaged about 33 years old, and 69% were women. The survey used three standard tools:

• Food insecurity: the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale, nine questions about running short or worrying about food.
• Diet quality: a standard 14-item Mediterranean diet adherence questionnaire (MEDAS), covering olive oil, vegetables, fruit, legumes, fish and more.
• Heart-health habits: a 0 to 100 score adapted from the American Heart Association's Life's Essential 8, built here from four behaviours: diet, physical activity, smoking and sleep duration.

What the survey found

Food insecurity was common. About 27.5% of participants reported some degree of it.

Diet quality was middling. Only 3.6% scored as highly adherent to a Mediterranean-style diet; most (67%) were moderate.

No link with food insecurity. Food insecurity didn't predict diet quality or the habits score, in simple correlations or adjusted models. Splitting by age group didn't change that.

Men scored lower. Sex was the most consistent predictor. Men had lower diet scores than women in every age group, lower habits scores overall, and were nearly twice as likely to fall into the low habits range (odds ratio 1.93).

Diet tracked habits. Higher diet scores went with higher habits scores: each extra diet point matched about 2.8 more points on the 100-point scale.

What to keep in mind

Part of that last link is built in. Diet is one of the four ingredients of the habits score, so the two would line up even if nothing else did.

Who answered matters. Volunteers recruited online skew young, female and connected. The authors couldn't calculate a response rate, and only seven people were 65 or older.

Everything was self-reported, once. Height, weight, diet and habits were all reported by participants at a single point in time, which invites both memory errors and wanting to look good. The diet questionnaire also showed low internal consistency in this sample.

A null result can be underpowered. With 808 people, a small effect of food insecurity could have been missed. The authors suggest any effect may run through stress or activity rather than through what people eat.

The study received no funding, and the authors declared no conflicts.

Where Soma fits

Soma doesn't track food or diet, and the app, which is not yet available, reads data from Apple Health rather than grocery budgets. The broader lesson still applies to anyone reading health numbers: the obvious story isn't always the one the data tell, and a single snapshot can't show what causes what.

Sources, as of November 10, 2026: Tuba Tekin and Nurcan Bağlam, "The relationship between food insecurity, diet quality, and behavioural cardiovascular health among adults," Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, doi 10.3389/fsufs.2026.2007378, published under CC BY 4.0. This post describes research and isn't medical advice.