Supermarket and fast-food outlet exposure in Copenhagen: associations with socio-economic and demographic characteristics

• Published in: Public health nutrition Vol. 14; no. 9; pp. 1618 - 1626
• Main Authors: Svastisalee, Chalida M, Nordahl, Helene, Glümer, Charlotte, Holstein, Bjørn E, Powell, Lisa M, Due, Pernille
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.09.2011; CABI Pub. on behalf of the Nutrition Society
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Age; Aged; Aged, 80 and over; business enterprises; Cross-Sectional Studies; Denmark; Eating behavior; Economic factors; Economics; Emigrants and Immigrants; Epidemiology; Exercise; Exposure; Family Characteristics; Fast food; Fast food industry; Fast Foods; Food; Food Supply; Geographic information systems; household income; Humans; immigration; Immigration policy; Income; Investigations; Low income groups; Middle Aged; Multivariate Analysis; Neighborhoods; Obesity; Overweight; Physical fitness; Population; Remote sensing; Residence Characteristics; School districts; sociodemographic characteristics; Socioeconomic Factors; socioeconomic status; Socioeconomics; Supermarkets; Tax allocation; United Kingdom; United States; Young Adult; Denmark; Canada; United Kingdom > UK; Australia; United States > US; United States; United Kingdom; Food environment; Geographic information system; Supermarkets; Fast-food outlets
• ISSN: 1368-9800; 1475-2727; 1475-2727
• DOI: 10.1017/S1368980011000759

Objective: To investigate whether exposure to fast-food outlets and supermarkets is socio-economically patterned in the city of Copenhagen. Design: The study was based on a cross-sectional multivariate approach to examine the association between the number of fast-food outlets and supermarkets and neighbourhood-level socio-economic indicators. Food business addresses were obtained from commercial and public business locators and geocoded using a geographic information system for all neighbourhoods in the city of Copenhagen (n 400). The regression of counts of fast-food outlets and supermarkets v. indicators of socio-economic status (percentage of recent immigrants, percentage without a high-school diploma, percentage of the population under 35 years of age and average household income in Euros) was performed using negative binomial analysis. Setting: Copenhagen, Denmark. Subjects: The unit of analysis was neighbourhood (n 400). Results: In the fully adjusted models, income was not a significant predictor for supermarket exposure. However, neighbourhoods with low and mid-low income were associated with significantly fewer fast-food outlets. Using backwise deletion from the fully adjusted models, low income remained significantly associated with fast-food outlet exposure (rate ratio = 0·66–0·80) in the final model. Conclusions: In the city of Copenhagen, there was no evidence of spatial patterning of supermarkets by income. However, we detected a trend in the exposure to fast-food outlets, such that neighbourhoods in the lowest income quartile had fewer fast-food outlets than higher-income neighbourhoods. These findings have similarities with studies conducted in the UK, but not in the USA. The results suggest there may be socio-economic factors other than income associated with food exposure in Europe.