IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aph/ajpbhl/10.2105-ajph.2012.300660_7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Obesity and supermarket access: Proximity or price?

Author

Listed:
  • Drewnowski, A.
  • Aggarwal, A.
  • Hurvitz, P.M.
  • Monsivais, P.
  • Moudon, A.V.

Abstract

Objectives: We examined whether physical proximity to supermarkets or supermarket price was more strongly associated with obesity risk. Methods: The Seattle Obesity Study (SOS) collected and geocoded data on home addresses and food shopping destinations for a representative sample ofadult residents of King County, Washington. Supermarkets were stratified into 3 price levels based on average cost of the market basket. Sociodemographic and health data were obtained from a telephone survey. Modified Poisson regression was used to test the associations between obesity and supermarket variables. Results: Only 1 in 7 respondents reported shopping at the nearest supermarket. The risk of obesity was not associated with street network distances between home and the nearest supermarket or the supermarket that SOS participants reported as their primary food source. The type of supermarket, by price, was found to be inversely and significantly associated with obesity rates, even after adjusting for individual-level sociodemographic and lifestyle variables, and proximity measures (adjusted relative risk = 0.34; 95% confidence interval = 0.19, 0.63) Conclusions: Improving physical access to supermarkets may be one strategy to deal with the obesity epidemic; improving economic access to healthy foods is another.

Suggested Citation

  • Drewnowski, A. & Aggarwal, A. & Hurvitz, P.M. & Monsivais, P. & Moudon, A.V., 2012. "Obesity and supermarket access: Proximity or price?," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 102(8), pages 74-80.
    • Handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:10.2105/ajph.2012.300660_7
    DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2012.300660
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.2105/AJPH.2012.300660
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2105/AJPH.2012.300660?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:10.2105/ajph.2012.300660_7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.apha.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.