Exploring Accessibility of Culturally Relevant Foods in a Low-Income Neighborhood in Baltimore City

Abstract

Abstract Objectives Culturally relevant foods (CRF) are food items that hold significance for a particular culture or subcultural group. Improving access to healthy CRF may be important for improving diets of minority populations, who are disproportionately affected by poor diet quality, obesity, and chronic disease. However, few studies have carefully identified CRF and evaluated their availability in retail stores. The present study aimed to (1) identify culturally relevant foods for African Americans living in Northeast Baltimore; and (2) examine access to the identified CRF at community food retail stores. Methods Free listing activities were conducted for 20 adult African American participants that live in Northeast Baltimore to identify CRF, frequency of consumption, and typical purchasing location. Smith's S saliency scores were calculated for each item and location using the AnthroTools package. An environmental checklist was used to determine accessibility of the 16 most salient items at the five most salient locations—Giant, DMG Foods (a small community grocery store in Baltimore), Safeway, Aldi, and Family Dollar. Each location was visited four times to account for price fluctuations and item availability. Availability scores were calculated for each location. Results One hundred and forty-five items were mentioned by participants in the free listing activity. Of these, chicken/fried chicken (S = 0.40) and greens/collard greens (S = 0.30) had the highest saliency scores and were mentioned by over 50% of participants. Other highly salient items included shrimp (S = 0.27), steak (S = 0.17), salad (S = 0.14), tomatoes (S = 0.13), and spaghetti (S = 0.13). Giant and Safeway had the highest availability scores (94%), followed by DMG Foods (69%) Aldi (56%), and Family Dollar (13%). Conclusions This study showed that CRF for adult African Americans living in Baltimore are widely available in large food retail stores, but only moderately available in medium sized grocery stores, and sparsely available in dollar stores. Future analyses will examine variability of stores by depth of stock, placement, and price of CRF. Funding Sources Urban Health Institute Small Grants Program.