Neighborhood Food Availability, Consumer Economics, and Sentinel Food Consumption

描述(申请人提供)：肥胖是美国最紧迫的营养问题。社区环境可能会导致这一问题，因为提供了过多的高热量零食和不足的低热量营养食品，如水果和蔬菜。低收入人群--他们通常很难获得新鲜水果和蔬菜--比其他人消费更少的这些食物，更有可能超重。为了更好地理解社区食物供应如何影响消费者的选择，并潜在地导致肥胖问题，我们提出了一项探索性的R21研究，探讨这些关系。 我们将利用正在进行的两项数据收集工作。在第一项研究中，我们在路易斯安那州东南部114个城市人口普查区的所有零售店中，对水果、蔬菜和高热量休闲食品的价格和货架空间进行了观察，并对这些人口普查区的居民进行了电话采访，了解他们对这些食品的消费情况。第二项研究名为路易斯安那州行为风险因素监测系统，是一项正在进行的路易斯安那州居民健康相关行为的电话调查，我们将在调查中添加有关这些食品消费的问题。这将与全州食品店供应情况的数据结合起来。 我们的分析将把公共健康营养、地理学和零售营销领域的概念和方法整合到一个消费经济学框架中。我们将使用多水平建模方法分析路易斯安那州这两项研究的数据，以量化社区食物可获得性指标与居民消费这些食物之间的关系。具体地说，我们将测试在控制了价格、家庭收入和个人社会人口特征后，社区层面的水果和蔬菜以及高热量零食的可获得性是否与个人对这些食物的消费有关。我们假设，可获得性将对消费产生独立和积极的影响。公共卫生重要性：通过这个项目，我们将了解那些生活在健康食品商店，特别是水果和蔬菜食品店，以及大量使用高卡路里零食的社区的人，是否更有可能有有利于肥胖的饮食习惯。这些信息将有助于指导社区努力创建促进健康的社区。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Obesity is the most pressing nutritional problem in the United States. Neighborhood environments may contribute to this problem by providing excess availability of calorie-dense snack foods and insufficient availability of low-calorie nutritious foods such as fruits and vegetables. Low-income individuals -- who often have difficult access to fresh fruits and vegetables -- consume less of these foods and are more likely to be overweight than others. To better our understanding of how neighborhood food availability influences consumer choice, and potentially contributes to the obesity problem, we propose an exploratory R21 study of these relationships. We will take advantage of two ongoing data collection efforts. In the first study, we are conducting in store observations on prices and shelf space devoted to fruits, vegetables, and calorie-dense snack foods in all retail stores in 114 urban census tracts in the southeastern part of Louisiana, combined with phone interviews with residents in these census tracts on their consumption of these foods. The second study, known as the Louisiana Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, is an ongoing telephone survey of health-related behaviors of Louisiana residents, to which we will add questions on consumption of these foods. This will be combined with data on food store availability statewide. Our analysis will integrate concepts and methods from the fields of public health nutrition, geography, and retail marketing into a consumer economics framework. We will analyze data from both Louisiana studies using multilevel modeling methods to quantify the relationship between measures of neighborhood food availability and consumption of these foods by residents. Specifically, we will test whether the availability of fruits and vegetables and calorie-dense snack foods at the neighborhood level is associated with consumption of these foods by individuals, after controlling for prices, household income and individual socio-demographic characteristics. We hypothesize there will be independent and positive effects of availability on consumption. Public health importance: Through this project we will learn whether persons who live in neighborhoods with limited access to food stores with healthy items, specifically fruits and vegetables, and abundant access to food stores with high calorie snack foods are more likely to have eating habits that favor obesity. This information will help guide community efforts to create neighborhoods that promote health.