Associations between home and school neighbourhood food environments and adolescents’ fast-food and sugar-sweetened beverage intakes: findings from the Olympic Regeneration in East London (ORiEL) Study

Abstract

We found no evidence of an association between absolute exposure to fast-food restaurants and convenience stores around home and school and adolescents' fast-food and SSB intakes. Relative exposure, which measures the local diversity of the neighbourhood food environment, was positively associated with SSB intake. Relative measures of the food environment may better capture the environmental risks for poor diet than absolute measures.

Does the neighborhood food environment contribute to ethnic inequalities in fast-food intake? findings from the ORiEL study

“…Used elsewhere (Wardle et al, 1998, Timperio et al, 2009, Pereira et al, 2005), these questions had good internal reliability when compared with young adults’ diet history questionnaires (Pereira et al, 2005). Following results from a 15-year longitudinal study in which visiting fast-food restaurants more than twice a week was associated with weight gain and insulin resistance among young people (Pereira et al, 2005), we dichotomized fast-food intake as 2 days per week or more (high) vs. less than 1 day per week (low) (Shareck et al, 2018, Pereira et al, 2005, Cutumisu et al, 2017).…”

“…Evidence regarding ethnic inequalities in diet among adolescents is scarce, even though adolescence is a critical period of change during which behaviours such as fast-food intake tend to increase, peaking between ages 19 and 29 (Adams et al, 2015). The retail food environment defined as ‘the number, type, location, and accessibility of food outlets such as grocery stores, convenience stores, fast food restaurants, and full-service restaurants’ (Glanz, 2009) has been related to dietary intake (Caspi et al, 2012, Engler-Stringer et al, 2014, Shareck et al, 2018), and may be one potential contributor to ethnic inequalities in diet (Public Health England, 2014, Public Health England, 2017). Two pathways have been suggested: (a) differential exposure and (b) differential vulnerability (Diderichsen et al, 2001).…”

Association between Neighborhood Food Environment and Body Mass Index among Older Adults in Beijing, China: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…In this study, we only considered the accessibility and availability of food outlets and did not consider other dimensions of the neighborhood food environment, such as affordability, acceptability, and accommodation, nor the consumption environment of food outlets [ 68 ]. Furthermore, there is inter-individual variability in how people interact with the food environment [ 18 ]. Unmeasured individual, peer, family, and community-level factors, such as personal taste, preferences, family food rules, and consumption environments in food establishments, could also mediate or moderate the relationship between the food environment and BMI.…”

“…The neighborhood or community food environment is commonly characterized as the number, type, location, and accessibility of multiple settings where people eat or procure food, such as supermarkets, convenience stores, fast-food restaurants, and full-service restaurants and the availability, affordability, and acceptability of foods in a community’s food outlets [ 12 , 13 ]. Many methods have been used in the measurement of the neighborhood food environment, such as a questionnaire or phone survey [ 14 , 15 , 16 ], commercial data list [ 17 , 18 ], and Geographic Information System (GIS) Technology [ 19 , 20 , 21 ]. The Baidu Map Application Programming Interface (API) (Baidu, Beijing, China) has been widely used in fields such as transportation, surveying, and mapping engineering [ 22 , 23 ], and has been proved effective in studies of obesogenic environments either [ 24 ].…”

Field Validation of Commercially Available Food Retailer Data in the Netherlands

“…From a public health perspective, the type of food retailers that exist near residential areas and schools may be especially relevant to the youth. For example, a greater availability and proximity to unhealthy food retailers has been associated with obesity and other diet-related chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease [6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. Likewise, greater distance to fast food/convenience shops and proximity to retailers selling healthier foods has been shown to be associated with healthier dietary habits and better health statuses [9,[13][14][15].…”