Implementing Food Assessment Methods for Dummies

"Understanding and Measuring Food Environments" is a quick text that could serve as a useful handbook to many planners. For instance, planners who are not expertly or technically trained in food systems planning or analysis would find the brief text especially helpful. The authors are explicit in their mentioning that the information provided is not the only means to accomplish such tasks, but the  direction they provide is reasonable and implementable. That is, planners who are unfamiliar with assessing food environments would find their guidance easy to understand and reproduce. Its brevity allows planners to quickly access the information. One criticism would include the heavy reliance on quantitative data. While quantitative data is undoubtedly critical to producing assessments with empirical evidence, some food environments are engendered by their qualitative aspects, as well. The authors do reference the need for qualitative data, but their recommendations could have been much more robust, as they focus on the quality of food and no characteristics beyond that. For example, it could be of use to assess spatial areas (communities) for their potential to become a healthful food hub, and in that context, success is predicated on community leaders, political environments, regulations, etc. Arguably, quantitative and qualitative analyses should be used in tandem during assessment.


A further criticism of the text includes the nuanced values behind the message that may not come across to planners unfamiliar with food systems and trying to immerse themselves in the subject. Although the authors do a fine job of articulating a host of assessments methods and certain correlations between said data, the more intuitive, nuanced are not expressly defined. (Again, the criticism concerns the perspective of an "unfamiliar" planner looking to expand their knowledge on assessing food environments and practice in this arena.) The variables used to assess environments are not only "ever-changing," as the authors describe it, but also multi-dimensional. Today, healthy eating is a "trend" that includes bolstering veganism/vegetarianism, gluten-free restaurant menus, fresh pressed juice shops, "super foods," and healthy-option food trucks. That is, not all restaurants are "bad" restaurants, thus creating an additional dimension to the way we number and analyze food environments. Examining only the quantitative data foregoes accounting the milieus surrounding the way we interact with and experience food through trends--the authors "ever-changing" component.


Perhaps the most poignant statement to understand in assessing food environment is as follows: "An identical food environment in two neighborhoods with different social/economic environments, can result in disparate eating experiences and health outcomes for the residents of the two neighborhoods." Relying only on quantitative data (e.g. same number of grocery stores in a 1 mile radius) may reveal equal opportunities, but leaving out the qualitative values would bury disparity in experience and health outcomes. They augment the statement with the following example, which perfectly summarizes the complexity and multi-dimensionality of assessing food environments: "In a high-income neighborhood, the absence of a grocery store is not as great a limitation when compared to a low-income neighborhood where automobile ownership rates are low."