What are the determinants of food security among regional and remote Western Australian children?

Objective: To explore how determinants of food security affect children in regional and remote Western Australia (WA), across food availability, access and utilisation dimensions. Methods: The Determinants of Food Security framework guided the thematic analysis (using NVivo 10) of semi-structured interviews with 20 key informants. Results: Food availability factors included availability, price, promotion, quality, location of outlets and variety. Food access factors included social support, financial resources, transport to food outlets, distance to food outlets and mobility. Food utilisation factors included nutrition knowledge and skills, children\u27s food preferences, storage facilities, preparation and cooking facilities and time to purchase food. Conclusions: Key food availability recommendations include increasing local food supply options. Food access recommendations include ensuring equitable formal social support and empowering informal support options. Food utilisation recommendations include prioritising food literacy programs focusing on quick, healthy food preparation and budgeting skills. Implications for public health: Policymakers should invest in local food supply options, equitable social support services and experiential food literacy programs. Practitioners should focus child/parent programs on improving attitude, knowledge and skills

Focusing on fast food restaurants alone underestimates the relationship between neighborhood deprivation and exposure to fast food in a large rural area

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Individuals and families are relying more on food prepared outside the home as a source for at-home and away-from-home consumption. Restricting the estimation of fast-food access to fast-food restaurants alone may underestimate potential spatial access to fast food.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The study used data from the 2006 Brazos Valley Food Environment Project (BVFEP) and the 2000 U.S. Census Summary File 3 for six rural counties in the Texas Brazos Valley region. BVFEP ground-truthed data included identification and geocoding of all fast-food restaurants, convenience stores, supermarkets, and grocery stores in study area and on-site assessment of the availability and variety of fast-food lunch/dinner entrées and side dishes. Network distance was calculated from the population-weighted centroid of each census block group to all retail locations that marketed fast food (<it>n </it>= 205 fast-food opportunities).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Spatial access to fast-food opportunities (FFO) was significantly better than to traditional fast-food restaurants (FFR). The median distance to the nearest FFO was 2.7 miles, compared with 4.5 miles to the nearest FFR. Residents of high deprivation neighborhoods had better spatial access to a variety of healthier fast-food entrée and side dish options than residents of low deprivation neighborhoods.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our analyses revealed that identifying fast-food restaurants as the sole source of fast-food entrées and side dishes underestimated neighborhood exposure to fast food, in terms of both neighborhood proximity and coverage. Potential interventions must consider all retail opportunities for fast food, and not just traditional FFR.</p

Generic Promotion of Agricultural Products: Balancing Producers' and Consumers' Needs

Farmers sponsor generic advertising campaigns to expand the total market for their commodity. Generic advertising promotes a type of food, such as milk, beef, or orange juice, rather than a specific company's brand. Sales promotions may help increase consumer demand and raise—or at least stabilize—commodity prices. If producers can improve their domestic markets through generic advertising, some pressure on price supports and other traditional farm policy tools could be relieved. The growth in promotions has spurred public debate about the costs and benefits for producers, and the effect on food budgets and choices for consumers. Do producers gain from advertising, and if so, do consumers pay the price in their food bills

Economic Well-Being and Household Size: Alternative Ways of Analyzing Demographic Information on Households

In this report... Researchers use income distribution to measure the economic well-being of the population. However, analyzing how much better off one household is than another is difficult because there are many factors to consider in order to present an accurate picture. One major obstacle in comparing the well-being of households of different sizes is deciding on the appropriate way to adjust household income so that all households, regardless of size, are on an equal level in the study. For example, does a four-person household require twice as much income as a two-person household to be equally as well-off? In this report, we examine some alternative ways of adjusting household income to compare welfare across different sized households and demonstrate that the demographic characteristics(such as age, race, sex) of the poorest and richest households can vary greatly with the type of adjustment method selected