The agrarian food consumption in Ukraine and its association with socio-demographic indicators of human development

Abstract

The objective of current research was to analyse the extent Ukrainian population was provided with the basic agrarian foods during 1990-2017 and to evaluate the relevant impact on the dynamics of human development indicators, such as birth rate, death rate, life expectancy at birth, mortality rate of infants and fertility rate. During the study, it was identified that consumption of basic agrarian foods did not meet the recommended nutrition norms. However, the tendency of significantly low consumption of «expensive» protein and vitamin containing foods (meat, milk, fish and fruits) was registered. Simultaneously, the tendency of «cheap» food consumption was topical. Thus the levels of bread, potato and vegetable consumption were exceeding the recommended nutrition norms. Our data suggest that nutrition degrading of agrarian food consumption corresponds with the change in the birth rate, the death rate, the life expectancy at birth and the fertility rate in Ukraine. The correlation analysis showed that the basic triggers of negative socio-demographic situation in Ukraine were low consumption of meat, milk, vegetables and fruits. The consumption of such agrarian product as bread, potato, sugar, eggs and vegetable oils did not perform a significant impact on the outcomes of the research.