Urban school neighbourhoods dominated by unhealthy food retailers and advertisements in Greater Tunis: a geospatial study in the midst of the nutrition transition.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

Food environments are a major determinant of children's nutritional status. Scarce evidence on food environments exists in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). This study aims to fill this gap by documenting the obesogenicity of food environments around schools in Greater Tunis, Tunisia - an LMIC of the Middle East and North Africa region with an ongoing nutrition transition and increasing rates of childhood obesity.

Design

In this cross-sectional study, we assessed built food environments around fifty primary schools. Ground-truthing was performed to collect geographic coordinates and pictures of food retailers and food advertisement sets within an 800-m road network buffer of each school. Retailers and advertisement sets were categorised as healthy or unhealt

SUBMITTER: Akl C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10882541 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature