Geographic and socioeconomic distribution of food vendors: a case study of a municipality in the Southern Brazil

Abstract

The objective of this study was to identify the food vendor distribution profile of the city of Florianópolis, Santa Catarina State, Brazil, and investigate its association with the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of different municipal regions. This descriptive, cross-sectional study obtained the location of food vendors from secondary data from different institutional sources. The density of different types of food vendors per 1,000 inhabitants in each municipal weighted area was calculated. The Kruskal-Wallis test compared the mean density of food vendors and the weighted income areas. The lowest-income regions had the lowest density of butchers, snack bars, supermarkets, bakeries/pastry shops, natural product stores, juice bars, and convenience stores. The identification of these areas may encourage the creation of public policies that facilitate healthy food startups and/or maintenance of healthy food vendors, especially in the lowest-income regions.

The food environment in Latin America: a systematic review with a focus on environments relevant to obesity and related chronic diseases

“…unhealthy foods by area-level socio-economic position and consistently showed higher availability of healthy foods in more affluent neighbourhoods. Results were fairly consistent across diverse contexts in Brazil (three cities: São Paulo, Florianopolis and Belo Horizonte) and Mexico (four cities: Mazatlán, Guadalajara, Mexico City and Puerto Vallarta) (22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27) . There were mixed results regarding the availability of unhealthy foods in more disadvantaged neighbourhoods.…”

Usual diet quality among 8- to 12-year-old Brazilian children

“…Gender is not associated with differences in diet quality 26 . Regarding social vulnerability, children living in low socioeconomic areas are more exposed to a lower density of establishments that sell foods, which can contribute to lower diet quality 28,29 .…”

Food environment, social deprivation and obesity among students from Brazilian public schools

“…Correa et al . ( 18 ) carried out a study with students aged 7 to 14 years in the city of Florianópolis, Brazil, and verified a lower number of food retailers and a lower density of butcher shops, cafeterias, natural products stores, juice houses, convenience stores, supermarkets, bakeries and confectioneries per thousand inhabitants in low-income areas compared with high-income areas. On the contrary, a study conducted in the USA with a nationally representative sample of 73 079 adolescents (mean age of 14·65 years) observed that poorer neighbourhoods had a higher availability of establishments considered proxies of unhealthy food, such as fast-food restaurants ( 49 ) .…”

“…The majority of studies that investigated family-environment interactions were carried out in developed countries whose social, cultural and environmental factors differ from the reality of Brazilian cities. Furthermore, similar studies that address these associations in Brazilian children and adolescents are scarce (16)(17)(18)(19) .…”