Does Distance Decay Modelling of Supermarket Accessibility Predict Fruit and Vegetable Intake by Individuals in a Large Metropolitan Area?

Abstract

Background Obesity, a major risk factor for hypertension, diabetes, and other chronic diseases is influenced by a person’s local environmental setting. Accessibility to supermarkets has been shown to influence nutritional behaviors and obesity rates; however the specific local environmental conditions and behavioral mechanisms at work in this process remain unclear. Purpose To determine how individual fruit and vegetable consumption behavior was influenced by a distance decay based gravity model of neighborhood geographic accessibility to supermarkets, across neighborhoods in Los Angeles County, independent of other factors that are known to influence nutritional behaviors. Methods A distance decay based accessibility model (gravity model) was specified for a large sample (n=7,514) of urban residents. The associations between their fruit and vegetable consumption patterns and their local accessibility to supermarkets were explored, while controlling for covariates known to influence eating behaviors. Results Significant variation in geographic accessibility and nutritional behavior existed by age, gender, race and ethnicity, education, marital status, poverty status, neighborhood safety and knowledge of nutritional guidelines. Logistic regression showed an independent effect of geographic accessibility to supermarkets, even after the inclusion of known controlling factors. Conclusion A basic gravity model was an effective predictor of fruit and vegetable consumption in an urban population, setting the stage for inclusion of supply and demand parameters, and the ability to estimate local directions and magnitudes of the factors that contribute to the differential obesity rates found in United States urban areas. This knowledge will facilitate more targeted interventions that can help eliminate health disparities.

Local food environment and fruit and vegetable consumption: An ecological study

“…To define the neighbourhood of HAP centres, we used their geographical position and created buffers with 1 mile (1600 m) around each centre (Robinson et al, 2013, Laska et al, 2010, Hattori et al, 2013). All commercial FV food stores contained within these buffer zones were included in the study (Costa et al, 2015).…”

“…Food environment characteristics that can favour FV consumption opportunities include type, location and geographic access to food stores as well as the quality, price and diversity of products (Caspi et al, 2012, Robinson et al, 2013, Duran et al, 2015a). Income inequalities are also a major factor in explaining food disparity, determining differences in food availability, access and consumption.…”

The Impact of Hospital Closures and Hospital and Population Characteristics on Increasing Emergency Department Volume: A Geographic Analysis

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O ambiente alimentar e o acesso a frutas e hortaliças: “Uma metrópole em perspectiva”

“…Given the power of this food group to promote health, different studies seek to know how the built environment affects the access to FV, mainly because the easy access is possibly associated with the higher consumption of these foods (Robinson et al, 2013).…”