IN-PERSON London. Section A

Abstract

Food environment research has been dominated by the evaluation of community nutrition environments such as the type, number, distribution, location, and accessibility of retail food stores with limited focus on the in-store features commonly referred to as the consumer nutrition environment. This study aimed at assessing the in-store environments of retail food stores in Lambeth borough of London using variables such as type of food products sold, pricing, promotions, and shelf and store placement strategies. We included over 800 geocoded retail food outlets including supermarkets, groceries, bakeries, and convenience stores among others, and constructed a composite score to evaluate their overall healthiness. Scores for each variable as well as the totals for each store were standardised on a scale of 0 to 100. Using the composite score, we analysed the spatial distribution of healthy versus unhealthy food stores using ArcGIS Pro 3.2 We found that supermarkets and greengrocers were healthier compared to bakeries and convenience stores. The findings also reveal variations of the healthiness of stores of the same type highlighting the need for using in-store variables in food environment assessments. The spatial analysis will display disparities in the healthiness of food environments across Lambeth. The use of this composite index for the evaluation of in-store environments of different stores offers actionable insights to policymakers and public health practitioners to target interventions and promote healthier food environments.