Assessing the obesogenic environment of North East England

Abstract

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Street connectivity and obesity in Glasgow, Scotland: Impact of age, sex and socioeconomic position

“…Results of the present study showed, firstly, that neighbourhood street connectivity was not significantly associated with adults' BMI after adjusting for key individual level characteristics. While not the first UK-based study to show null associations between street connectivity and obesity (e.g., Burgoine et al, 2011), findings are at odds with findings of a number of previous studies that have examined associations of obesity with markers of walkability defined using administratively-defined buffer zones (e.g., Doyle et al, 2006;Spence et al, 2008), as was the approach used here. There are several possible explanations for these discrepant findings.…”

“…The authors of the review, and others (Lake and Townshend, 2006), have identified the lack of evidence from outside of the US as problematic, since associations of the built environment with obesity may vary across countries. Findings from one study based in North East England and published since the 2010 review showed null associations between street connectivity and body mass index (BMI), further underscoring the importance of additional investigation outside of the US (Burgoine et al, 2011).…”

Obesogenic environments: current evidence of the built and food environments

“…Though the research base has burgeoned, exploring environmental influences on both physical activity and diet within the same study remains relatively rare, though international examples exist 53 and a number of themes have been highlighted. For example, an Australian study highlighted that high stress levels found in socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods were associated with poor weight management, less physical activity during leisure time, and frequent fast food consumption in women 54 .…”

Obesogenic environments: environmental approaches to obesity prevention

“…However, it is possible to show that children living closer to parks and recreational spaces are less likely to experience weight gain (24). Moreover, the availability of food outlets in the neighborhood was not necessarily associated with unhealthy diets but was associated with higher consumption of fruit per day (25).…”