The consumption of fruit and vegetables (F&V) is important for human health to protect against non-communicable disease and micronutrient deficiency. Increasing consumption of F&V may also benefit planetary health if these foods are substituted for foods with higher environmental footprints such as red meat or dairy. The retail food environment (RFE) is an influential junction between the food system and individual diets as it drives access to F&V through external (physical access) and personal (availability, affordability, acceptability) domains. We performed a systematic search of six literature databases (January 2021) for studies assessing access to F&V in the RFE and its association with F&V consumption in adults in high- and upper-middle income countries. 36 studies were identified and categorised by dimensions of food access – accessibility, affordability, acceptability, availability and accommodation. More than half of the studies (n = 20) were based in the USA. F&V accessibility was the most commonly reported dimension (n = 29); no study reported on accommodation. 6 studies were rated to be high quality. A positive association of increased availability of F&V options in the RFE with intake was identified in 9 of 15 studies. Associations in both acceptability and accessibility dimensions were inconsistent. No association was observed between F&V affordability and consumption although available data were limited. Many challenges exist to building a robust evidence base within food environment research including conceptual, definitional and methodological heterogeneity and measurement standardisation. Future food policies should consider multi-dimensional interventions to promote access to F&V in the RFE across all domains.

There exists a wealth of statistical data in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food on agricultural structure and production, and on the consumption of food, much of which is well known and readily available to research workers outside. But much less is known about the manufacturing and distribution costs of food between the farm gate and the consumer. The purpose of this paper is to present aggregate data relating to food marketing, in much the same way that earlier contributions, notably to this Journal, have covered agricultural output and net income, and farm structure. Changes in the food marketing sector since the end of rationing are briefly set out and, following discussion of some of the conceptual problems involved, estimates are presented of the value added to food between farm or port and the retail level, and of the magnitude of the flows within the sector

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costs, we assumed that a treatment was provided to every patient who visited the dentist according to the national dental cavities guideline, all related costs were obtained from the SOAT fare manual 2011 reported by the government. We multiplied the treatment cost for each patient by the total number of dental visits to obtain the third-payer cost. We calculated from the patient´s perspective the lost output as a result of a reduction of productivity due to dental cavities, using DALYs, multiplied by the 2011 current GDP divided by the working-age population. RESULTS: The Economic impact for 2011 was USD 67.018.016. This is the result of adding the third-payer cost of USD 56.234.161 plus the patient cost of USD 10.783.855. CONCLUSIONS: With this first approximation to the economic impact of dental cavities the government can design cost-effective oral health policies to reduce its prevalence for Colombia's population. The cost of dental cavities represents 0.02% of 2011 current GDP, this means that on average there is an expenditure of USD 1.46 for each Colombian citizen to treat dental cavities. Those numbers shows the importance to generate permanent public policies to improve the Colombians´ oral health.