Association of food environment and food retailers with obesity in US adults.
The food environment has been shown to be a factor affecting the obesity rate. We studied the association of density of food retailer type with obesity rate in U.S. adults in local regions controlling for socioeconomic factors. Parametric nonlinear regression was used on publically available data (year=2009) at the county level. We used the results of this association to estimate the impact of the addition of a new food retailer type in a geographic region. Obesity rate increased in supercenters (0.25-0.28%) and convenience stores (0.05%) and decreased in grocery stores (0.08%) and specialized food stores (0.27-0.36%). The marginal measures estimated in this work could be useful in identifying regions where interventions based on food retailer type would be most effective.
Department of Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering, Penn State University, 310 Leonhard Building, University Park, PA 16802, USA.
Renfei
R
Yan
Department of Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering, Penn State University, 310 Leonhard Building, University Park, PA 16802, USA.
Nathaniel D
ND
Bastian
School of Industrial & Systems Engineering, Georgia Tech, 755 Ferst Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA. Electronic address: pgriffin@gatech.edu.
Paul M
PM
Griffin
D000328:Adult; D003132:Commerce; D004777:Environment; D005260:Female; D005523:Food Supply; D006801:Humans; D009765:Obesity / Q000453:epidemiology*; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology
Food environment; Food retailers; Obesity rate