A Study of the Dynamic Intersection of the Individual and the Food Environment in Three Populations.

The food environment, encompassing all of the external influences that affect a person’s diet, is a highly studied topic in public health. Many aspects of the food environment have been implicated in reducing diet quality, from food available in the home, to availability of different varieties of food outlets, to changes in the food system on a national level. However, less attention has been paid to the interaction between the individual and his/her food environment: the ways in which the effects of food environment differ by individual characteristics, and the ways in which the individual shapes the food environment to which he/she is exposed. This dissertation assesses the relationship between the individual and the food environment within 3 populations, at 3 levels of the food environment. First, we describe the creation of the Healthy Meal Index, a tool for measuring the healthfulness of meals served in the home. We describe the characteristics of the parents and children that are associated with healthier meals. We found that parental education was positively associated with meal healthfulness and that parents served healthier meals to girls than boys. Next, we assess the individual characteristics and the food environment characteristics that are associated with choice of grocery store within a population of college students. We found that males, younger students, and minorities shopped at less expensive stores. Fruit and vegetable consumption was positively associated with shopping at more expensive stores. Distance to a stores in the two lowest priced store tertiles, but not the highest, affected store choice. Finally, we assessed the interaction between changes in the food environment with different socioeconomic characteristics on obesity prevalence in a nationally representative sample of the Colombian population. We found that obesity incidence was highest in the lowest wealth index and in urban areas between 2005 and 2010. Overall, our studies provide evidence for a dynamic relationship between individuals and the food environment, in which individual characteristics shape the food environment to which one is exposed and the degree to which the food environment shapes behavior is affected by the level of restriction an individual faces.PhDNutritional SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/113300/1/nmka_1.pd