Beyond food swamps and food deserts: exploring urban Australian food retail environment typologies.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

'Food deserts' and 'food swamps' are food retail environment typologies associated with unhealthy diet and obesity. The current study aimed to identify more complex food retail environment typologies and examine temporal trends.

Design

Measures of food retail environment accessibility and relative healthy food availability were defined for small areas (SA2s) of Melbourne, Australia, from a census of food outlets operating in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2016. SA2s were classified into typologies using a two-stage approach: (1) SA2s were sorted into twenty clusters according to accessibility and availability and (2) clusters were grouped using evidence-based thresholds.

Setting

The current study was set in Melbourne, the capital city of the state of Victoria, Austral

SUBMITTER: Needham C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9991784 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature