“Healthy corner store initiatives may be very effective in reducing the burden of childhood obesity if they offer a specified threshold of healthy options,” Michael Yedidia, PhD, said.

Yedidia and Punum Ohri-Vachaspati, PhD, RD, have collaborated on research in childhood obesity for over a decade.

Their initial study existed to supply data to state coalitions, to impact programs and initiatives to improve children’s weight status. The data was local, easily interpretable, fairly comprehensive and relative to informing interventions, with a very pragmatic focus, Dr. Ohri-Vachaspati said.

The households from their initial study became a helpful source for baseline data in this longitudinal study across four cities in New Jersey.

"The fact that these communities were initiating policy systems and environmental systems to change childhood obesity provided us with a perfect opportunity to design a study as a natural experiment to see how changes in food environment would impact changes in children’s BMI overtime," Ohri-Vachaspati added.

The protocol they developed for reclassifying commercial data on retail stores to reflect the healthfulness of a store’s inventory was “particularly telling,” Dr. Yedidia said. “To differentiate the convenience of small grocery and convenience stores allowed us to capture the convenience of BMI in living close to a store with a healthier inventory.”

“The way we conceptualized exposures using lengths of time and geography was an important feature,” he added.

The researchers studied the changes in food environments and changes in children’s weight status across a range of exposure levels rather than adopting a fixed measure or over a length of time. They found a significant impact in convenience stores on children’s BMI, with significant relationships at a quarter mile, half mile and one mile.

Exposure to small grocery stores offering healthier options affected and improved weight status, they concluded.

Video Content: Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics

Video Source: EurekAlert