posted on 2011-06-10, 00:00authored byL Macdonald, A Ellaway, Kylie BallKylie Ball, S Macintyre
Background: Access to healthy food is often seen as a potentially important contributor to diet. Policy documents in many countries suggest that variations in access contribute to inequalities in diet and in health. Some studies, mostly in the USA, have found that proximity to food stores is associated with dietary patterns, body weight and socio-economic differences in diet and obesity, whilst others have found no such relationships. We aim to investigate whether proximity to food retail stores is associated with dietary patterns or Body Mass Index in Glasgow, a large city in the UK. Methods: We mapped data from a ‘Health and Well-Being Survey’ (n = 991), and a list of food stores (n = 741) in Glasgow City, using ArcGIS, and undertook network analysis to find the distance from respondents’ home addresses to the nearest fruit and vegetable store, small general store, and supermarket. Results: We found few statistically significant associations between proximity to food retail outlets and diet or obesity, for unadjusted or adjusted models, or when stratifying by gender, car ownership or employment. Conclusions: The findings suggest that in urban settings in the UK the distribution of retail food stores may not be a major influence on diet and weight, possibly because most urban residents have reasonable access to food stores
History
Journal
BMC public health
Volume
11
Pagination
1 - 9
Location
London, England
Open access
Yes
ISSN
1471-2458
Language
eng
Notes
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Publication classification
C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal
Copyright notice
2011, Macdonald et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.