Support Among U.S. Adults for Local and State Policies to Increase Fruit and Vegetable Access

Abstract

Few American children or adults meet national objectives for consumption of both fruits and vegetables (FV). State and local policies that support community access to FV can help support individuals and families in having easier access to FV for purchase and ultimately consumption. To assess U.S. adult support for state and local policies designed to increase community-level access to FV. Data were analyzed from the 2008 HealthStyles survey of U.S. adults (N=5181), in which participants were asked how likely they would be to support four types of changes to local or state policies: those that would create farmers' markets and community gardens, or increase FV offerings in small stores and public sector venues. Respondents' answers were collapsed into three categories ("supportive," "neutral," and "unsupportive"); the prevalence of support for each type of policy was determined, and logistic regression was used to calculate ORs for support of each by selected demographic variables. Overall, 62.1% supported farmers' markets, 57.7% supported the public sector, 54.3% supported small stores, and 47.2% supported community garden policies. Support for policy changes was relatively high among women, Hispanics, and non-Hispanic blacks. Although some variation in support exists, the majority of Americans support state or local policy changes designed to increase community access to FV. Future research should augment this work by including questions on willingness to pay, trade-off methods, or referendum-style questions to inform priorities among FV policy initiatives.