Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Panel: Diet, Healthy Food Access and Food Environments

(Health Policy)

The average American diet is out of sync with federal dietary guidelines. While policy has begun to focus on the food environment and food prices (e.g., Healthy Food Financing Initiative and Food Insecurity Incentive program) as mediating factors in diet, research demonstrating this link is nascent and mixed. Food environments have gained attention from research demonstrating that they impact healthy food access primarily of low-income communities, which is predominately due to fewer supermarkets and more convenience stores, resulting in higher prices as well as a lower quantity and availability of healthy foods. Representing multiple disciplines (public health, economics, and geography), methods and scales of inquiry, this panel proposed here addresses the links between food environments, food prices, diet, and healthy food access to contribute to the debates about how to use policy to encourage healthier diets. The first paper “What and from Where We Eat in America: The impact of the food environment on dietary intake,” asks the question: What is the impact of the immediate food environment on the sourcing of food and resultant diet and nutrition intake? To answer this question, the 2011-2012 NHANES, which contains respondent geographic location and dietary recall data, is used to assess the food sources (including 10 retail, non-retail and institutional food source types) and quantities of nutrients consumed by USDA food categories. Through hierarchical modeling, this data is combined with geographic measures to examine the contribution of the environment to overall diet and sourcing of foods. The second paper builds on the first paper and expands the conversation by incorporating price data in to the food environment measures. "Estimating the relationship among food access, food prices and nutritional quality of food acquisitions” uses the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS) data to assess the nutritional quality of food purchases and acquisitions. Specifically, this paper examines how SNAP program participation, access to grocery stores and neighborhood food prices correlate with where foods are acquired and the nutritional quality of food purchases and acquisitions. The authors use the USDA’s 2010 Healthy Eating Index and component densities to assess the nutritional quality of household foods acquisitions. The final paper continues the exploration of the role of food prices and healthy food access and takes a deep dive in to one city: Seattle, Washington. This paper, “The Effect of a City-Level Minimum-Wage Policy on Food Prices: A Study of Supermarket Food Prices in Seattle-King County,” uses a difference-in-difference approach to examine the impact that a local policy change has on food prices and thus on healthy food access. This study was conducted in lower income neighborhoods, which have been associated with worse diet quality and worse health outcomes. As a local policy attempts to address the overall economic well-being of these residents, does this policy have unintended consequences on food prices? Preliminary results suggest that local-level minimum wage policies do not impact healthy food access and food prices.