Does food market modernisation lead to improved dietary diversity and diet quality for urban Vietnamese households?

Abstract

This study investigates the possible mechanisms through which modern food markets may affect Vietnamese households’ dietary diversity and diet quality using data from a survey of 1,700 urban households with seven‐day food recall. We calculate Household Dietary Diversity Scores to measure dietary diversity, and use consumption frequencies of micronutrients (vitamin A and heme iron) and a macronutrient (protein) to create a household measure of diet quality. We estimate a Poisson regression model using a two‐step control function approach to address the potential endogeneity of our key explanatory variable, modern market food expenditure shares. Higher modern market food expenditure share is positively and significantly associated with consumption frequency of heme iron, but there are no significant associations with consumption of vitamin A and protein. We further explore indirect linkages between food expenditure shares and dietary diversity, which in turn, may be linked to household diet quality. Results from a system of equations show that the food expenditure share variable has no significant relationship with dietary diversity, but dietary diversity is positively and significantly associated with diet quality. Our results indicate that alone, policies which encourage ‘food market modernisation’ are not enough to improve diet quality in urban Vietnam.

Modernization of African Food Retailing and (Un)healthy Food Consumption

“…The regression analysis also shows that using supermarkets is associated with a higher consumption of ultra-processed foods and a lower consumption of unprocessed foods, also after controlling for income and other socioeconomic variables. This is in line with earlier research on the dietary effects of supermarkets [19,21,22,24,32]. From a nutrition and health perspective, these dietary trends are undesirable, as high consumption of ultra-processed foods is associated with increased risks of obesity and chronic diseases [10,28,33,34].…”

“…We start estimating the models in Equation 2by only considering one food retailer in FRS i , namely supermarkets. This is similar to previous studies that have analyzed the effects of supermarkets on diets and nutrition [13,[22][23][24]32]. However, conclusions based on such models that only consider the use of supermarkets may be incomplete, as households typically use various types of retailers.…”

“…Socioeconomic characteristics of interest include household income levels, education, gender, and age of the household head, household size and structure, ethnicity, religion, car ownership, among others. Previous research showed that these characteristics can influence the decision of which retailers to use [13,15,[22][23][24]32]. The use of different retailers is measured through a set of dummy variables capturing whether or not the household purchased any food from a particular type of retailer during the 7-day recall period.…”

Supermarkets and Household Food Acquisition Patterns in Vietnam in Relation to Population Demographics and Socioeconomic Strata: Insights From Public Data

“…From 2010 to 2014, households in LowSM and MedSM showed an increase of 3.5% in total proportion of acquired food from purchases, in contrast to households in the HighSM cluster that showed a smaller increase (2.4% on average). Our results clearly indicate a positive association of per capita expenditure and proportion of food consumed from purchases with acquired food diversity as has been shown in previous studies (Drescher et al, 2009;Chandon and Wansink, 2012;Rupa et al, 2019). Interestingly though, presence of supermarkets in the food environment is not associated with this positive relationship, as this trend was observed across all supermarket clusters.…”

Understanding food westernisation and other contemporary drivers of adult, adolescent and child nutrition quality in urban Vietnam

“…A study of 400 women of reproductive age in Hanoi used mixed methods, including household surveys and 24-h dietary recall, and found no significant association between food retail transformations and dietary quality (10) . Another study found that food expenditure at modern markets was not directly associated with urban Vietnamese households' dietary diversity (15) .…”