Food Environments
The United States has the heaviest population in the world, with the majority of adults and almost one-third of children now classified as overweight or obese. Individual-level interventions aimed at restricting calories (and increasing activity levels) h
- PDF / 396,401 Bytes
- 13 Pages / 576 x 720 pts Page_size
- 88 Downloads / 225 Views
ion One morning, as on most weekdays, Carolyn and her young sons set out for school on foot, scooter, and bicycle—a convenience of living in Philadelphia’s A.L. Dannenberg et al. (eds.), Making Healthy Places: Designing and Building for Health, Well-being, and Sustainability, DOI 10.5822/978-1-61091-036-1_3, © Island Press 2011
50
FOOD ENVIRONMENTS
Center City. On their route they pass a full complement of food options: a grocery store with neatly displayed produce, a high-end restaurant run by a food-world celebrity, multiple coffee shops (both chain outlets and boutique operations), a gourmet cheese emporium, an artisanal bakery, and a locally beloved gelato shop. On Wednesdays (and again on Saturdays), they can visit a farmers’ market in Rittenhouse Square, at the crossroads of their neighborhood’s residential and commercial corridors. Closer to one son’s preschool, the junk food takes over, with cheesesteaks, soft pretzels, pizza, and hoagies advertised and available at every turn (Figure 3.1). Perhaps it is not surprising that Philadelphia has captured the title of the “Fattest American City” within the past decade, although Houston, Las Vegas, Detroit, and other cities have also earned that designation over the past years. Still, Center City’s food economy is vibrant and diverse, unlike that in Philadelphia’s disadvantaged neighborhoods. There the food landscape is marked by a limited range of outlets, dominated by corner stores with few healthful food options and by quick service take-out restaurants. The majority of schoolchildren in Philadelphia visit corner stores every day, often en route to or from school, procuring a ready supply of inexpensive and low-nutrition food—an average of almost 400 calories per visit, at a cost of just over one dollar (Borradaile et al. 2009). As a resident of one of Philadelphia’s highpoverty neighborhoods noted, “I don’t know if that’s like that in other places, too. But I know in Philadelphia if it’s not there at the corner store then you’re not going to get it” [Cannuscio, Weiss, and Asch 2010].
This chapter answers these questions: s (OWDOESTHEFOODENVIRONMENTEITHERSUPPORTHEALTHORCONTRIBUTETO adverse health consequences? s (OWCANTHEPRODUCTION DISTRIBUTION ANDMARKETINGOFFOODCONTRIBUTETO risk of obesity and other chronic diseases? s 7HATSTRATEGIESHAVEBEENTRIEDANDFOUNDPROMISINGFORIMPROVINGTHE food environment to support the health of communities?
Nutrition and Population Health Currently, the United States leads the world in obesity rates. In the past three decades, the prevalence of childhood obesity, calculated in terms of body mass index (BMI), has tripled, with approximately 30 percent of all American children ages six to eleven now being overweight (between the eighty-fifth and ninety-fifth percentiles for BMI) and 15 percent obese (at or above the ninetyfifth percentile for BMI). Rates are markedly higher for African American and
51
52
THE IMPACT OF COMMUNITY DESIGN ON HEALTH
Figure 3.1 Philadelphia cheesesteaks, a cornerstone of the local food culture, are avail
Data Loading...
