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Density of fast-food outlets weighs on area residents
By Dorsey Griffith - dgriffith@sacbee.com
Last Updated 10:28 pm PDT Monday, April 28, 2008
It's often said, "You are what you eat," but new research suggests that where you eat may have a lot to do with it, as well.
In communities with an abundance of fast-food outlets and convenience stores, researchers have found, obesity and diabetes rates are much higher than in areas where fresh fruit and vegetable markets and full-service grocery stores are easily accessible.
"The implications are really dramatic," said Harold Goldstein, a study author and executive director of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy, based in Davis. "We are living in a junk-food jungle, and not surprisingly, we are seeing rising rates of obesity and diabetes."
The new study builds on research released a year ago that found California has four times as many fast-food restaurants and convenience stores as grocery stores and produce vendors.
For the new project, Goldstein teamed with UCLA's Center for Public Health Policy Research and PolicyLink to explore possible links between the kinds of food Californians can easily access and the prevalence of obesity and diabetes in their communities.
The outcome: "We found a very strong link," Goldstein said. "It was true for people living in both high-income and low-income communities, regardless of race, ethnicity, age, gender or level of physical activity."
For the 2007 study, researchers used commercial data sources and geographic information system software to construct a "retail food environment index," or RFEI, by adding the number of convenience stores and fast-food outlets and dividing that sum by the number of supermarkets and produce vendors, including farmers markets.
The average RFEI for California adults is 4.5, meaning the average California adult has more than four times as many fast-food restaurants and convenience stores near their home as grocery stores and produce vendors.
They combined the RFEI with health data from a representative sample of 40,000 California residents. "We took each survey respondent and drew a circle around their house, and asked, 'What is their retail food environment?' " said Goldstein.
What they found was that California adults who live in a retail food area with an index of 5 or greater have a 23 percent higher prevalence of diabetes and a 20 percent higher prevalence of obesity than those living in an environment where the RFEI was 3 or less.
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