Neighborhood Food Availability, Consumer Economics, and Sentinel Food Consumption

描述（由申请人提供）：肥胖是美国最紧迫的营养问题。社区环境可能会导致这个问题，因为它提供了过量的高热量零食，而水果和蔬菜等低热量营养食品的供应不足。低收入者通常难以获得新鲜水果和蔬菜，他们消费的这些食物较少，而且比其他人更有可能超重。为了更好地了解社区食品供应如何影响消费者的选择，并可能导致肥胖问题，我们提出了一个探索性的R21研究这些关系。 我们将利用两个正在进行的数据收集工作。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、蔬菜和高热量零食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。第二项研究被称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，我们将在其中添加有关这些食物消费的问题。这将与全州食品商店可用性的数据相结合。 我们的分析将从公共卫生营养，地理和零售营销领域的概念和方法整合到消费者经济学框架。我们将使用多层次建模方法分析路易斯安那州研究的数据，以量化邻里食品供应和居民消费这些食品的措施之间的关系。具体来说，我们将测试是否可用的水果和蔬菜和热量密集的零食在社区一级与消费这些食品的个人，控制价格，家庭收入和个人的社会人口特征。我们假设，将有独立的和积极的影响，对消费的可用性。公共卫生重要性：通过这个项目，我们将了解那些生活在社区的人是否更有可能有有利于肥胖的饮食习惯，这些社区的人很少有机会去食品店购买健康食品，特别是水果和蔬菜，而有大量的机会去食品店购买高热量的零食。这些信息将有助于指导社区努力建立促进健康的社区。

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.