Urban food deserts – areas in cities where residents lack nearby access to affordable, healthy foods – are often blamed for disproportionate rates of obesity in low-income urban neighborhoods. Several recent initiatives in the United States – such as Pennsylvania's Fresh Food Financing Initiative, California's Freshworks Fund, and the federal Healthy Food Financing Initiative – have invested hundreds of millions of dollars to promote the placement of full-service supermarkets in low-income communities. Yet the research on community food environments and impact on area residents’ diet and health is still in its infancy.
New RAND research finds that the distance consumers’ travel to the store where they shop may have less impact on obesity rates than food prices or the store environment, particularly promotions of healthy or unhealthy foods.
Drawing on baseline data from the Pittsburgh Hill/Homewood Research on Eating, Shopping, and Health (PHRESH) study, RAND researchers tested whether distance to the food stores where residents reported shopping and prices at those stores predicted obesity among residents of low-income neighborhoods.
Researchers found that, after accounting for prices, residents’ distance to food stores was not associated with obesity. One plausible explanation for this result is that variations in prices may capture underlying differences in store environments such as availability or marketing of healthy and junk foods.
While low-price and high-price stores were similar in terms of availability, high-price stores had almost three times more displays to promote healthy foods compared to lower-price stores. Conversely, lower-price stores had more displays to promote junk food relative to high-price stores.
The findings of this study suggest that placing supermarkets in food deserts to improve access may be less important than changing the in-store environment with respect to healthy and unhealthy food promotion and food prices. Although prices for healthy foods are typically lower in supermarkets/wholesale clubs, so are prices for junk foods, which may lead to bulk purchasing and greater consumption. Providing better pricing and more promotions of healthy foods may be a more direct path to reducing obesity than simply decreasing consumer distance to stores
The report is published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
Source: RAND Corporation
