Food store owners' and managers' perspectives on the food environment: an exploratory mixed-methods study.

Clarence C Gravlee,Alan F Schultz,Connie Betterley,M Miaisha Mitchell,P Qasimah Boston

doi:10.1186/1471-2458-14-1031

Abstract

BackgroundNeighborhood characteristics such as poverty and racial composition are associated with inequalities in access to food stores and in the risk of obesity, but the pathways between food environments and health are not well understood. This article extends research on consumer food environments by examining the perspectives of food-store owners and managers.MethodsWe conducted semistructured, open-ended interviews with managers and owners of 20 food stores in low-income, predominantly African American neighborhoods in Tallahassee, Florida (USA). The interviews were designed to elicit store managers’ and owners’ views about healthy foods, the local food environment, and the challenges and opportunities they face in creating access to healthy foods. We elicited perceptions of what constitutes “healthy foods” using two free-list questions. The study was designed and implemented in accord with principles of community-based participatory research.ResultsStore owners’ and managers’ conceptions of “healthy foods” overlapped with public health messages, but (a) agreement about which foods are healthy was not widespread and (b) some retailers perceived processed foods such as snack bars and sugar-sweetened juice drinks as healthy. In semistructured interviews, store owners and managers linked the consumer food environment to factors across multiple levels of analysis, including: business practices such as the priority of making sales and the delocalization of decision-making, macroeconomic factors such as poverty and the cost of healthier foods, individual and family-level factors related to parenting and time constraints, and community-level factors such as crime and decline of social cohesion.ConclusionsOur results link food stores to multilevel, ecological models of the food environment. Efforts to reshape the consumer food environment require attention to factors across multiple levels of analysis, including local conceptions of “healthy foods”, the business priority of making sales, and policies and practices that favor the delocalization of decision making and constrain access to healthful foods.

Highlights

Neighborhood characteristics such as poverty and racial composition are associated with inequalities in access to food stores and in the risk of obesity, but the pathways between food environments and health are not well understood
The community food environment refers to the spatial distribution of food sources, including the location, density, and type of food stores
The inconsistency of results is partly attributable to differences in measurement [25], but it likely reflects the distal relationship between community food environments and dietary behavior: The effect of community food environments on dietary intake depends on many intervening factors at the local level, including the quality of food stores and products available in them, local marketing and promotion strategies, the quality of service in stores, and residents’ perceptions of local food stores [26]

Summary

Introduction

Neighborhood characteristics such as poverty and racial composition are associated with inequalities in access to food stores and in the risk of obesity, but the pathways between food environments and health are not well understood. In May 2010, the White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity identified food environments as a driver of childhood obesity and recommended a $400 million initiative to increase access to healthy foods in low-income communities in the United States [1]. This initiative and related efforts draw on evidence that neighborhood characteristics. Research in this area has been guided by the distinction between community and consumer food environments [12]. The inconsistency of results is partly attributable to differences in measurement [25], but it likely reflects the distal relationship between community food environments and dietary behavior: The effect of community food environments on dietary intake depends on many intervening factors at the local level, including the quality of food stores and products available in them, local marketing and promotion strategies, the quality of service in stores, and residents’ perceptions of local food stores [26]

Methods

Results

Conclusion