Obesogenic environments: exploring the built and food environments

Obesogenic environments: exploring the built and food environments

1. Obesogenicity of an environment

2. The obesogenicity of an environment

   • Definition
     • conditions that promote obesity in the population

3. ENVIRONMENTS

   • Health related
     • its physical design (the built environment)
     • socio-cultural rules that govern these environments
     • The socio-economic status
   • microenvironments
     • school, workplace, home, neighbourhood.
   • macroenvironments
     • Education and health systems, government policy, society’s attitudes and beliefs

4. BUILT ENVIRONMENT

   • consists of three elements
     • land use patterns
       • Residential, commercial, office, industrial, etc.
     • transportation systems.
     • physical design
   • Cities and Communities.
     • suburbs
       • ‘less walkable’
       • obesity related
     • Cities
       • higher levels of residential density
       • land-use mix, access to subway stations and bus stops, and street connectivity
         • Lowest BMI in population

5. FOOD AND NUTRITION

   • Availability and accessibility to food
     • food access
       • Food for home consumption from supermarkets and grocery shops
       • out-of-home consumption from restaurants and take-aways.
       • fast-food
   • food advertising and marketing.
     • the influence of industry
       • advertising to children
         • consumption of energy dense micronutrient-poor foods.

6. MEASURING THE OBESOGENIC

   • Direct measures
     • face to face interviews by trained investigators
   • Indirect measures
     • combination of survey data to estimate socio-economic status
   • Intermediate measures
     • use of telephone book, yellow pages or marketing databases
   • objective measurements
     • actual counts of traffic
   • subjective measurements
     • an individual’s self-reported perception of crime in their neighbourhood

7. FUTURE WORK

   • prevention
     • programmes aimed at children and adolescents
   • Research studies
     • about the connection between location, diet, and activity in youth.
     • To explore factors related to their environment and urban space
     • Log of dietary intake and activity levels
   • Health programs for youth and children
     • obesity prevention