Given the rapid aggrandize, it has been postulated the environment has a key role in the causation of obesity. Factors such as the neighborhood-scale features (referred to as the built environment) have been mainly identified as influencing diet and physical activity (2). Of particular the importance to this framework are features of the food environment (FE), thus constituting barriers and opportunities to food sources of the varying nutritional quality and energy density (3). The FE is delineated as the physical presence of food that can mainly influence a person’s diet (4). Contributing to the FE is the proximity to food store locations such as mainly the restaurants (fast-food, full service, and bars and pubs) and the retail outlets (food markets/grocery stores and liquor stores). Fast- food establishments generally have foods of lower nutritional quality and higher caloric density than the home-prepared foods (3). Early studies have reported fast-food restaurants to be more common in the neighborhoods with a higher prevalence of obesity. However, more recent studies have been melanged,

1. Local Food Environment and
Obesity
DR.SREEREMYA
FACULTY OF BIOLOGY

2. • (1) Given the rapid aggrandize, it has been postulated the environment
has a key role in the causation of obesity. Factors such as the
neighborhood-scale features (referred to as the built environment) have
been mainly identified as influencing diet and physical activity (2). Of
particular the importance to this framework are features of the food
environment (FE), thus constituting barriers and opportunities to food
sources of the varying nutritional quality and energy density (3). The FE is
delineated as the physical presence of food that can mainly influence a
person’s diet (4). Contributing to the FE is the proximity to food store
locations such as mainly the restaurants (fast-food, full service, and bars
and pubs) and the retail outlets (food markets/grocery stores and liquor
stores). Fast- food establishments generally have foods of lower nutritional
quality and higher caloric density than the home-prepared foods (3). Early
studies have reported fast-food restaurants to be more common in the
neighborhoods with a higher prevalence of obesity. However, more recent
studies have been melanged,

3. • Nowadays, parents are aggrandizing aware of the influence of food
nutrition, healthfulness, and safety on children’s health (Maddock
et al., 2004). However, the restaurant choice includes consideration
of much more than merely obtaining nutrients and the services
needed to sustain life. Family restaurant choices are also
intertwined with the socioeconomic, cultural, and environmental
factors at the multiple levels .Currently, awareness about
nutraceuticals are been understood (Sreeremya.2017). Molecular
gastronomy, specification are also new techniques implemented by
food environment (Sreeremya, 2018). Socioeconomic disadvantages
and uneven food environments are both barriers to a healthy dining
for rural minority children due to their social economic status (SES)
and the community environments (Du et al., 2014).

4. • It should not be surprising that families’ restaurant choices are closely allied with
their income, education, and race because of the resulting financial ability, the
nutritional knowledge, and food culture. Neighborhoods of low SES are more likely
to be exposed to the fast food restaurants than are middle to higher SES
neighborhoods. The association between out-of-home eating and the poor diet
impacts children and the adolescents in all social and economic classes, but this
relationship most strongly affects children from much lower SES neighborhoods.
Consumer decision-making with regard to dining is a ramify process related to
market dynamics and competition among food retailers. Spatial interaction models
have been widely availed to understand consumers’ shopping choices and to
examine and assess the dynamics of retail competition (Zhong et al., 2018).
• The most influential spatial interaction model, the Huff’s model, estimates the
likelihood that a consumer will patronize a certain store among all the potential
competitors. The probability is positively related to the attractiveness of the store
and inversely ravished to the distance between the consumer and the store. Past
researches on the attractiveness of retail stores has highlighted the importance of
store size, the agglomeration effect, and physical location.

5. • Consumers’ choices are determined by the interactions of
sociodemographic, locational, the environmental, and nutritional
factors, which the spatial interaction model alone is not able to
model and delineate. However, the agent-based model, a systems
science approach, offers the robust tool for simulating consumer
choices. It is a powerful simulation technique able to model the
complex processes involving multiple dynamic interactions between
the people and their environments (Li et al., 2011).
• Thus far, little research has availed systems science methodology to
examine dining choices. Extant agent-based simulations of the
consumer dietary behaviors are mainly performed in a gridded
space with the virtual agents, such as in grocery shopping
simulations, racial segregation and diet, and the convenience store
footfalls (Li et al., 2014). The integration of this approach with
empirical information and a spatial interaction model provides new
insight into family restaurant choice with the broader scope.

6. • In light of this, researchers have begun searching for potential mechanisms linking
the neighborhood of residence with obesity, particularly those amenable to policy
interventions (Seto et al., 2016). The local food environment has been the primary
focus of both researchers and policy-makers. Some studies have availed food store
surveys to directly measure the availability of nutritious foods such as fruits and
the vegetables (or in some cases, unhealthy foods such as snack or the junk food)
in a given area. More commonly, the availability of food outlets such as the
supermarkets, fast food or convenience stores is a proxy for the availability of
certain types of food. While investigations have also looked at the food
environment around schools, worksites, and the other destinations, the majority
have examined and assessed the residential neighbourhood (Ho et al., 2010).
• Systematic reviews suggest that the disparities in the availability of both healthy
and unhealthy food exist in the US, with the lower income communities and those
with higher percentages of ethnic minorities having both the greater access to
outlets that sell unhealthy food and the lower access to those selling healthy food.

7. •
• Journal of General Nursing and Community
Health, Local Food Environment and Obesity,
Dr.S.Sreeremya ,2020.Vol 2(1):1-8.