Brown Jennifer Ann, Ferdinands Alexa R, Prowse Rachel, Reynard Darcy, Raine Kim D, Nykiforuk Candace I J
School of Public Health, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
SSM Popul Health. 2021 Apr 26;14:100803. doi: 10.1016/j.ssmph.2021.100803. eCollection 2021 Jun.
Nutritional health of children and youth is an increasing cause for concern in Canada. Through food and beverage messaging in multiple environments, young people develop eating behaviours with ramifications throughout their life course. Unhealthy food retailers near schools, recreation facilities, and childcare centres-key activity settings for healthy eating promotion-present repeated, compounding exposures to commercial geomarketing. Geomarketing impacts nutritional health by promoting highly processed, calorie-dense, and nutrient-poor foods and beverages across urban landscapes. While food retail mix (as a ratio of healthy to unhealthy food retailers) can be used to assess food environments at multiple scales, such measures may misrepresent young people's unique experience of these geographic phenomena. Moving beyond uniform conceptualization of food environments, new research methods and tools are needed for children and youth. We investigated young people's food environments in the major Canadian cities of Calgary and Edmonton. Using government-initiated nutrition guidelines, we categorized 55.8% of all food retailers in Calgary, and 59.9% in Edmonton as 'unhealthy'. A Bernoulli trial at the 0.05 alpha level indicated few differences in prevalence proximal to activity settings versus elsewhere in both cities, demonstrating the limited applicability of food retail mix for characterizing young people's food environments. To model unhealthy food retailers geomarketing to children and youth, we considered their proximity to multiple activity settings, using overlapping radial buffers at the 250 m, 500 m, 1000 m, and 1500 m scales. Examining young people's food environments relative to the spaces where they learn and play, we determined that as many as 895 out of 2663 unhealthy food retailers fell within 1500 m of 21+ activity settings. By conceptualizing, measuring, and problematizing these "super-proximal" unhealthy food retailers, urban planners and public health researchers can use these techniques to pinpoint unhealthy food retailers, or "weeds in the food swamp," as a critical site for healthy eating promotion in municipalities.
儿童和青少年的营养健康问题在加拿大日益受到关注。通过多种环境中的食品和饮料宣传信息，年轻人养成的饮食行为会对他们的一生产生影响。学校、娱乐设施和儿童保育中心附近的不健康食品零售商——促进健康饮食的关键活动场所——让年轻人反复接触到商业地理营销的叠加影响。地理营销通过在城市景观中推广高度加工、高热量且营养匮乏的食品和饮料，对营养健康产生影响。虽然食品零售组合（健康食品零售商与不健康食品零售商的比例）可用于在多个尺度上评估食品环境，但此类措施可能无法准确反映年轻人对这些地理现象的独特体验。为了超越对食品环境的统一概念化理解，需要针对儿童和青少年开发新的研究方法和工具。我们对加拿大主要城市卡尔加里和埃德蒙顿的年轻人食品环境进行了调查。根据政府制定的营养指南，我们将卡尔加里所有食品零售商中的55.8%以及埃德蒙顿的59.9%归类为“不健康”。在0.05的显著性水平下进行的伯努利试验表明，在这两个城市中，靠近活动场所的不健康食品零售商患病率与其他地方相比差异不大，这表明食品零售组合在描述年轻人的食品环境方面适用性有限。为了模拟向儿童和青少年进行营销的不健康食品零售商的地理分布，我们考虑了它们与多个活动场所的距离，使用了250米、500米、1000米和1500米尺度上的重叠径向缓冲区。通过研究年轻人相对于他们学习和玩耍空间的食品环境，我们确定在2663家不健康食品零售商中多达有895家位于21个及以上活动场所的1500米范围内。通过对这些“超近距离”不健康食品零售商进行概念化、测量和问题分析，城市规划者和公共卫生研究人员可以利用这些技术来确定不健康食品零售商，即“食品沼泽中的杂草”，将其作为城市中促进健康饮食的关键场所。
