Contributions of Food Environments to Dietary Quality and Cardiovascular Disease Risk

Luo

et al. 2022

IJERPH

The essential role of the objective food environment in achieving healthy aging has been widely recognized worldwide. However, the existing empirical evidence is mostly based on Western cases, and how the objective food environment associates with health outcomes among Chinese elderly remains poorly understood. By merging nationally representative micro survey data with Baidu-based spatial data on the location of food outlets, this study develops accessibility and diversity indicators to explore the relationship between food environment and diet-related diseases among Chinese elderly and investigates how healthy lifestyles moderate this relationship. The results show that improvement in healthy food accessibility and diversity decreases both the probability and the number of diet-related diseases that the elderly suffer. Having more healthy lifestyle factors is associated with a lower risk of suffering from diet-related diseases and strengthens the negative effect of healthy food environment on suffered diet-related diseases. Heterogeneity effect analysis suggests that the relationship between objective food environment and diet-related diseases differs by city scale and income level. The findings of this study shed light on designing tailor-made policies for non-Western countries to promote healthy aging.

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 91%

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 83%

Unraveling the Role of Objective Food Environment in Chinese Elderly’s Diet-Related Diseases Epidemic: Considering Both Healthy Food Accessibility and Diversity

Luo

et al. 2022

IJERPH

Food Science & Nutrition

“…This could potentially limit the inclusion of relevant evidence. For example, those studies that considered the important role of smartphone technology but not the role of food insecurity on obesity risk were excluded, although food environments particularly expand into online settings that shape consumers' food choices (Vadiveloo et al, 2021 ). Most included quantitative studies were cross‐sectional in their designs.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A mixed‐method systematic review and meta‐analysis of the influences of food environments and food insecurity on obesity in high‐income countries

Eskandari

Lake

Rose

et al. 2022

“…Current research indicates several associations between unhealthy food environments, unhealthy diets and health outcomes such as overweight and obesity, affecting disadvantaged population groups such as low income and ethnic minorities disproportionately. [7][8][9][10] An emerging body of work within the food environment field has been the development of conceptual frameworks. In 2018, for example, Turner et al 2 proposed an evidence-based framework that structures food environments in terms of two domains (Table 1).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping the digital food environment: A systematic scoping review

et al. 2021

Food environments are directly linked to diets and health outcomes such as overweight, obesity, and noncommunicable diseases. The digitalization of food environments is becoming a central issue in public health, yet little is known about this emerging field. We performed a systematic scoping review to map the research on the digital food environment and investigate how the eight dimensions of the food environment, according to an established framework (availability, prices, vendor and product properties, marketing and regulation, accessibility, affordability, convenience, and desirability), might be shifting in the context of a digital society. We searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, Scopus, and Web of Science for studies published between 2000 and 2019, using search terms covering digital technology and food environment, which yielded 13,580 unique records. Our analysis of 357 studies shows that digitalization is taking place in all dimensions of the food environment, and enabling the emergence of new forms of buying and selling food, such as online grocery shopping and online food delivery, which may be changing availability of foods and affecting the physical distance to shops and time allocated for shopping. Systematic reviews identified indicated that digital food marketing and social media can influence food choices, preferences and consumption. Our findings suggest that digital and physical food environments are interconnected and influencing one another, but the impact of the digital on health and nutrition is yet unclear.