Self-Efficacy as a Mediator of the Relationship Between the Perceived Food Environment and Healthy Eating in a Low Income Population in Los Angeles County

Abstract

Background-While previous studies have described psychosocial and environmental factors that contribute to healthy eating, much remains unknown about the interactions between them.

A Systematic Review on Socioeconomic Differences in the Association between the Food Environment and Dietary Behaviors

“…Exceptions were two repeated cross-sectional studies by Colchero et al [31] and Jilcott Pitts et al [32] and two longitudinal studies by Meyer et al [33] and Rummo et al [34]. Thirty studies were conducted in an adult population [25,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59], seven were focused on adolescents [60,61,62,63,64,65,66] and six were conducted in a mixed age population [31,67,68,69,70,71]. Consumption or purchase of F & V were used as measure of dietary behavior in twenty-eight studies [32,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,42,43,44,46,48,49,52,53,…”

“…Sixteen out of the twenty studies were conducted in the USA. Most of these twenty studies considered more than one aspect of the food environment: fourteen papers considered availability and quality of stores in the neighborhood [32,35,38,39,40,41,42,43,53,56,57,59,67,68]; ten papers studied access, distance or time taken to travel to stores [32,36,37,40,43,57,58,59,60,67,68]; and seven papers studied economic aspects of the food environment such as objective food cost and/or perceived affordability [32,43,53,54,55,56,67].…”

“…In the studies conducted among a socioeconomically disadvantaged group that considered availability and quality of stores in the neighborhood [32,35,38,39,40,41,42,43,53,56,57,59,67,68], five studies observed that perceived [39,40,56] and objective [36,41,42,57] availability of stores selling healthier products was associated with healthier dietary behavior and two studies observed that availability or use of stores selling unhealthier products was associated with unhealthier dietary behavior [42,60]. Six studies found no association between availability in food stores and dietary behavior [32,35,38,43,59,60].…”

An Examination of Demographic and Psychosocial Factors, Barriers to Healthy Eating, and Diet Quality Among African American Adults

“…Several studies have also shown that having social support (or positive social influences and encouragement from others to engage in healthy eating) was associated with higher diet quality [31,32,33,34]. Similarly, self-efficacy has been shown to predict diet quality in different target populations [35,36,37,38]. Barriers to healthy eating such as cost and finances, availability and convenience, absence of fruits and vegetables in the home, and lack of knowledge regarding healthy foods have also been associated with the diet quality of African Americans [39,40].…”

Mediating roles of psychological factors and physical and social environments between socioeconomic status and dietary behaviors among African Americans with overweight or obesity

“…The findings of our study suggest that dietary behaviors of socioeconomically disadvantaged adults may be improved by modifying the physical and social environments. For example, healthy dietary behaviors could be adopted or maintained by enhancing perceptions of access to healthy food, identifying where to buy healthy foods, where affordable healthy food might be offered in the community, and how to get to these locations (Gase et al, 2016). In addition, sharing healthy cooking tips with neighbors through community programs or health fair events promoting a healthy community may also improve an individual's perception of the social environment and, in turn, dietary behaviors.…”