Elsevier

Appetite

Volume 45, Issue 2, October 2005, Pages 195-197
Appetite

Brief Communication
Do ‘food deserts’ influence fruit and vegetable consumption?—a cross-sectional study

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2005.04.003Get rights and content

Abstract

Lack of access to affordable healthy foods has been suggested to be a contributory factor to poor diet. This study investigated associations between diet and access to supermarkets, transport, fruit and vegetable price and deprivation, in a region divergent in geography and socio-economic indices. A postal survey of 1000 addresses (response rate 42%) gathered information on family demographics, supermarket and shop use, car ownership, mobility and previous day's fruit and vegetable intake. Postcode information was used to derive road travel distance to nearest supermarket and deprivation index. Fruit and vegetable prices were assessed using a shopping basket survey. Generalised linear regression models were used to ascertain predictors of fruit and vegetable intake. Male grocery shoppers ate less fruit than female grocery shoppers. Consumption of vegetables increased slightly with age. Deprivation, supermarket fruit and vegetable price, distance to nearest supermarket and potential difficulties with grocery shopping were not significantly associated with either fruit or vegetable consumption. These data suggest that the three key elements of a food desert, fruit and vegetable price, socio-economic deprivation and a lack of locally available supermarkets, were not factors influencing fruit or vegetable intake. We suggest that food policies aimed at improving diet should be orientated towards changing socio-cultural attitudes towards food.

Introduction

It has been asserted that ‘food deserts’, i.e. poor communities, where residents cannot buy affordable healthy food, are an important contributor to poor diet (Acheson, 1998). Whilst Cummings and Macintyre (2002) have discussed the lack of empirical evidence for this hypothesis, eradication of food deserts is an integral part of government policy aimed at reducing health inequalities (Food Poverty Eradication Act, 2001). We examined the relationship between access to supermarkets, fruit and vegetable prices, socio-economic deprivation and consumption of fruit and vegetables in a cross-sectional study in the Barnsley area of South Yorkshire.

Section snippets

Methods

The sampling frame was a random selection of 1000 electoral roll addresses, equally distributed between four electoral wards. The wards were chosen to reflect diversity in grocery shopping facilities, material deprivation and level of urbanisation; two were urban wards whilst two were predominately rural. The two urban wards had Index of Multiple Deprivation scores (Index of Multiple Deprivation, 2000) of 55.5 and 51.1, and were both ranked in the most deprived decile of English wards (rank 374

Results

A total of 426 respondents provided complete information for the fruit regression model, their mean age was 50.7 years (SD 14.9), median fruit intake 2 portions/day (range 0–12, truncated at 6), median road travel distance to nearest supermarket 1.9 km (range 0.1–9.4 km). The corresponding figures for the vegetable model were 420 respondents, 50.5 years (SD 14.7), 2 servings/day (range 0–7, truncated at 6), 1.9 km (range 0.1–9.4 km).

Table 1 shows the results of the fruit and vegetable GLMs. Male

Discussion

These data suggest that the three key elements of a food desert, fruit and vegetable price, socio-economic deprivation and a lack of locally available supermarkets were not factors influencing fruit or vegetable intake. It seems that cultural influences including gender and age, as opposed to material factors such as poverty and distance to supermarkets, predominate in influencing consumption of fruit and vegetables.

This study is limited in that the sample was drawn from four of 22 wards. The

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the support of Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council (project funding), Barnsley Dietetic Service (project support and facilitation), local community volunteers and groups (project support), all households and individuals who provided study data, Barnsley Chronicle (project publicity), Dr Ashley Adamson (independent peer reviewer) and those anonymous reviewers who have helped with drafts of this paper.

References (5)

  • D. Acheson

    Independent enquiry into inequalities in health

    (1998)
  • S. Cummings et al.

    ‘Food deserts’—evidence and assumption in health policy making

    British Medical Journal

    (2002)
There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

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