Measuring the Food Environment: From Theory to Planning Practice

Abstract

The retail food environment is becoming an increasingly important consideration in land use planning decisions. Although many municipal official (or comprehensive) plans call for improved food environments, there are no standard methods by which to assess the implementation of policies reflecting these priorities. Methods developed to assess policy enforcement should be feasible to implement by urban planners and developers, should show some correlation between food environments and residents' health or diet outcomes, and should consider a more nuanced view of food environments than solely focusing on food access. In this paper we review food environment characteristics, theories and conceptual models, and assessment methods with goal of presenting theoretical bases for the selection of food environment assessment tools by public health planners and other practitioners. We examine methods to assess food environments and discuss potential adaptations of the methods to suit the needs of urban planners. A case study of the region of Waterloo is presented to illuminate the potential of food environment assessments for healthy public policy enforcement. Finally we describe implications for public health and urban planning.

Measuring Rural Food Environments for Local Action in Australia: A Systematic Critical Synthesis Review

“…This issue is not confined to rural food environment research, but is reflective of the broader field, with Glanz et al [10] reporting 50.4% of their reviewed studies examining the reliability of tools, 30.4% testing for validity and only 13.6% investigating sensitivity to change. Other researchers have found similar results [18,25,28], however, no clear benchmarks are available, against which the reliability, validity and sensitivity of food environment tools can be assessed [14,26,66].…”

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

“…A large number of different measures seeking to capture the characteristics of neighborhood food environment have been employed in the existing literature. One common measure has referred to accessibility theories, which often reflect a geographical perspective of the food environment [ 23 , 24 ]. Approaches used to determine accessibility to different types of food outlets include the absolute number count or density [ 14 , 25 ], dominance of certain types of food outlets [ 13 ], path distance calculation [ 7 ], and geo-big data analysis [ 26 ].…”

Diving into the consumer nutrition environment: A Bayesian spatial factor analysis of neighborhood restaurant environment

“…food planning, which has recently emerged as a tool for improving the food environment and facilitating healthy eating. Although planners cannot control the food prices and what to sell in restaurants (Minaker et al, 2011), they can greatly contribute to restaurant environment improvement via zoning and licensing regulations. For example, Raja et al (2008) suggested that fast-food restaurants should be required to provide a "healthy offerings check", which certifies that healthy foods will be offered, from the local public health agency in the licensing process, when they are applying for a food establishment permit.…”