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Neighbourhood food typologies, fast food outlet visitation and snack food purchasing among adolescents in Melbourne, Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2021

Venurs HY Loh*
Affiliation:
Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition, School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, Deakin University, Geelong Waurn Ponds Campus, 75 Pidgons Road, Waurn Ponds, Geelong, VIC 3216, Australia
Maartje Poelman
Affiliation:
Chair Group Consumption and Healthy Lifestyles, Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands
Jenny Veitch
Affiliation:
Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition, School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, Deakin University, Geelong Waurn Ponds Campus, 75 Pidgons Road, Waurn Ponds, Geelong, VIC 3216, Australia
Sarah A McNaughton
Affiliation:
Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition, School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, Deakin University, Geelong Waurn Ponds Campus, 75 Pidgons Road, Waurn Ponds, Geelong, VIC 3216, Australia
Rebecca Leech
Affiliation:
Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition, School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, Deakin University, Geelong Waurn Ponds Campus, 75 Pidgons Road, Waurn Ponds, Geelong, VIC 3216, Australia
Anna Timperio
Affiliation:
Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition, School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, Deakin University, Geelong Waurn Ponds Campus, 75 Pidgons Road, Waurn Ponds, Geelong, VIC 3216, Australia
*
*Corresponding author: Email venurs.loh@deakin.edu.au
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Abstract

Objective:

Despite the increased attention on neighbourhood food environments and dietary behaviours, studies focusing on adolescents are limited. This study aims to characterise typologies of food environments surrounding adolescents and their associations with fast food outlet visitation and snack food purchasing to/from school.

Design:

The number of food outlets (supermarket; green grocers; butcher/seafood/deli; bakeries; convenience stores; fast food/takeaways; café and restaurants) within a 1 km buffer from home was determined using a Geographic Information System. Adolescents’ self-reported frequency of fast food outlet visitation and snack food purchasing to/from school. Latent Profile Analysis was conducted to identify typologies of the food environment. Cross-sectional multilevel logistic regression analyses were conducted to examine the relationships between food typologies, fast food outlet visitations and snack food purchasing to/from school.

Setting:

Melbourne, Australia.

Participants:

Totally, 410 adolescents (mean age= 15·5 (sd = 1·5) years).

Results:

Four distinct typologies of food outlets were identified: (1) limited variety/low number; (2) some variety/low number; (3) high variety/medium number and (4) high variety/high number. Adolescents living in Typologies 1 and 2 had three times higher odds of visiting fast food outlets ≥1 per week (Typology 1: OR = 3·71, 95 % CI 1·23, 11·19; Typology 2: OR = 3·65, 95 % CI 1·21, 10·99) than those living in Typology 4. No evidence of association was found between typologies of the food environments and snack food purchasing behaviour to/from school among adolescents.

Conclusion:

Local government could emphasise an overall balance of food outlets when designing neighbourhoods to reduce propensity for fast food outlet visitation among adolescents.

Information

Type
Research paper
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Nutrition Society
Figure 0

Table 1 Comparisons of latent profile solutions of 2–6 according to the model fit indicators

Figure 1

Fig. 1 Median and interquartile range of food outlet counts within 1 km street network buffer by neighbourhood typologies (4-class solution)

Figure 2

Table 2 Percentage of participants (n 410) in each typology with availability (at least one) of each food outlet within 1 km buffer

Figure 3

Table 3 Odds ratios (95 % CI) of the associations between neighbourhood food typologies, fast food visitations and purchasing behaviours among adolescents (n 410)

Supplementary material: File

Loh et al. supplementary material

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