ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health and Nutrition
This article is part of the Research TopicEating Behavior and Chronic Diseases: Research Evidence from Population Studies, Volume IIView all 21 articles
Energy Intake and Dietary Fiber as Principal Determinants of Obesity in Eastern Europe, 2010–2022: An Ecological Panel Study
Provisionally accepted
- Technical University of Moldova, Chișinău, Moldova
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Background. Obesity is a major global health challenge, with Eastern Europe standing out for rapid nutrition transitions and persistent social and economic inequalities. Despite its high prevalence, longitudinal ecological evidence on the structural determinants of obesity in this region remains limited. Objective. To examine population-level associations between dietary energy availability, dietary fiber intake, macronutrient composition, and insufficient physical activity with obesity and overweight prevalence in Eastern Europe during 2010–2022. Methods. Data from FAOSTAT and the World Health Organization were assembled into a balanced panel of 130 country–year observations. Analyses combined descriptive statistics and Pearson correlations with two-way fixed-effects regressions (country and year), using robust standard errors and one-year lagged predictors to test for robustness. Results. Higher energy availability was positively associated with both obesity and overweight, while dietary fiber consistently showed a protective effect. Marginal estimates indicated that an additional 100 kcal/day predicted an increase of nearly one percentage point in obesity, whereas +5 g/day of fiber corresponded to an approximate two-percentage-point reduction. Neither macronutrient shares nor insufficient physical activity showed significant associations. Conclusions. Dietary energy and fiber emerge as the primary structural correlates of obesity in Eastern Europe. These findings underscore the need for region-specific, data-driven nutrition and public health policies to address obesogenic environments and reduce socio-economic disparities in diet quality.
Keywords: Ecological study, Panel data, Fixed-effects regression, Energy Intake, Dietary Fiber, Non-communicable diseases, public health policy
Received: 04 Sep 2025; Accepted: 27 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Siminiuc, Țurcanu and Siminiuc. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Rodica Siminiuc, rodica.siminiuc@adm.utm.md
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