Combining place-based and people-based approaches to assess food accessibility

International audienceFood deserts designate neighbourhoods with low availability and accessibility of healthy foods. In France, there have been very few studies of food deserts, a gap which this paper aims to fill. Moreover, we address the frequently ignored daily mobility of inhabitants, conducting our study in the Montpellier city-region. First, we estimated the population living far from food outlets and mapped the related residential areas. Second, we explored whether households’ food environment exposure varies with socioeconomic position, basing our analysis on the 699 household cross-sectional study Mont’Panier. We find that deprived households are not those most affected by physical access issues. In addition, the deprived households located farthest from food stores are not living in the most deprived neighbourhoods. Considering daily mobility modifies this result: households living in the most deprived neighbourhoods are exposed to fewer and less diverse food outlets in their daily activity spaces than households living in wealthier neighbourhoods. These results confirm the need to go beyond place-based approaches and develop people-based approaches