Measures of Perceived Neighborhood Food Environments and Dietary Habits: A Systematic Review of Methods and Associations

Abstract

Access to healthy food is a necessity for all people. However, there is still a lack of reviews on the assessment of respondent-based measures of neighborhood food environments (perceived food environments). The aim of this systematic review was to evaluate the measurement tools for perceived food environments by five dimensions of food access and to obtain the overview of their associations with dietary habits among people aged 18 years and older in middle- and high-income countries. Observational studies using perceived food environment measures were identified through a systematic review based on two databases for original studies published from 2010 to 2020. A total of 19 final studies were extracted from totally 2926 studies. Pertaining to the five dimensions of food access, 12 studies dealt with accessibility, 13 with availability, 6 with affordability, 10 with acceptability, 2 with accommodation, and 8 with a combination of two or more dimensions. Perceived healthy food environments were positively associated with healthy dietary habits in 17 studies, but 8 of them indicated statistically insignificant associations. In conclusion, this review found accessibility and availability to be major dimensions of perceived food environments. The relationship between healthy food environments and healthy diets is presumably positive and weak.

Can Ordering Groceries Online Support Diet Quality in Adults Who Live in Low Food Access and Low-Income Environments?

“…In a recent systematic review, perceived healthy food environments were positively associated with healthy dietary habits [ 59 ]. However, there is a lack of studies assessing the link between diet quality and perceived food environment [ 14 , 60 , 61 , 62 ].…”

Associations between the external and personal food environment and eating behavior in relation to socioeconomic status in peri-urban settings: Results from the CIVISANO study in Flanders, Belgium

“…This suggest that the overall link between the food environment and eating behaviour might be more complex than initially thought and that the concept of the food environments singular in uence on people´s eating behaviour might be too simplistic. This might be due to the fact that the food environment is a vastly complex system and reducing it to single metrics such as density, proximity and perceived availability and solely including single settings such as a neighborhood or workplace narrows the food environment down to an ´arti cial environment´ and deviates from the complexity of real-life food acquisition and eating behavior, resulting in statistically insigni cant or null observations (35). In this study moderation according to perceived indicators on the association between the food environment and eating behaviour was not explored.…”

Neighborhoods and Cardiovascular Health: A Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association

“…Police-reported crime rates within a buffer around participants' homes 8,9 MESA neighborhood safety scale 8,10 Collective efficacy Self-report Informal control scale 11 ; social cohesion scale 10,11 Physical disorder Direct observation Google Street View Self-report Systematic social observations 12,13 MESA aesthetic quality scale 10 Food environment Commercially available business location databases Self-report Density of or distance to nearest food outlet 14 MESA healthy food availability survey 15,16 Parks and physical activity resources…”