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Food Co-Operatives: A Potential Community-Based Strategy to Improve Fruit and Vegetable Intake in Australia

Only 5% of Australian children and adults eat enough fruit and vegetables. Two common barriers are high cost and limited access. Food co-operatives (‘co-ops’) may have the potential to reduce these barriers. We conducted a scoping analysis of food co-ops in the Sydney region to describe their charac...

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Autores principales: Mihrshahi, Seema, Partridge, Stephanie R., Zheng, Xiaolei, Ramachandran, Divya, Chia, Debbie, Boylan, Sinead, Chau, Josephine Y.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7312496/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32532100
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17114154
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author Mihrshahi, Seema
Partridge, Stephanie R.
Zheng, Xiaolei
Ramachandran, Divya
Chia, Debbie
Boylan, Sinead
Chau, Josephine Y.
author_facet Mihrshahi, Seema
Partridge, Stephanie R.
Zheng, Xiaolei
Ramachandran, Divya
Chia, Debbie
Boylan, Sinead
Chau, Josephine Y.
author_sort Mihrshahi, Seema
collection PubMed
description Only 5% of Australian children and adults eat enough fruit and vegetables. Two common barriers are high cost and limited access. Food co-operatives (‘co-ops’) may have the potential to reduce these barriers. We conducted a scoping analysis of food co-ops in the Sydney region to describe their characteristics and objectives. We also conducted a survey of members and non-members of co-ops to assess their fruit and vegetable intake using validated questions. Fifteen food co-ops were identified in the Sydney region and the most common objective was to provide cheap affordable produce. Most co-ops (61%) were in areas of high socio-economic status (SES). Members of food co-ops had a higher vegetable intake than non-members [mean difference (MD) = 0.54 serves/daily; 95% confidence interval (CI) of 0.15 to 0.93] and were also more likely to meet the recommendations for fruit and vegetable intake [odds ratio (OR) = 4.77 (95% CI = 1.15, 19.86)]. Implications of this study are that if food co-ops can be implemented on a wider scale, they hold potential for improving fruit and vegetable intakes.
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spelling pubmed-73124962020-06-29 Food Co-Operatives: A Potential Community-Based Strategy to Improve Fruit and Vegetable Intake in Australia Mihrshahi, Seema Partridge, Stephanie R. Zheng, Xiaolei Ramachandran, Divya Chia, Debbie Boylan, Sinead Chau, Josephine Y. Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Only 5% of Australian children and adults eat enough fruit and vegetables. Two common barriers are high cost and limited access. Food co-operatives (‘co-ops’) may have the potential to reduce these barriers. We conducted a scoping analysis of food co-ops in the Sydney region to describe their characteristics and objectives. We also conducted a survey of members and non-members of co-ops to assess their fruit and vegetable intake using validated questions. Fifteen food co-ops were identified in the Sydney region and the most common objective was to provide cheap affordable produce. Most co-ops (61%) were in areas of high socio-economic status (SES). Members of food co-ops had a higher vegetable intake than non-members [mean difference (MD) = 0.54 serves/daily; 95% confidence interval (CI) of 0.15 to 0.93] and were also more likely to meet the recommendations for fruit and vegetable intake [odds ratio (OR) = 4.77 (95% CI = 1.15, 19.86)]. Implications of this study are that if food co-ops can be implemented on a wider scale, they hold potential for improving fruit and vegetable intakes. MDPI 2020-06-10 2020-06 /pmc/articles/PMC7312496/ /pubmed/32532100 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17114154 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Mihrshahi, Seema
Partridge, Stephanie R.
Zheng, Xiaolei
Ramachandran, Divya
Chia, Debbie
Boylan, Sinead
Chau, Josephine Y.
Food Co-Operatives: A Potential Community-Based Strategy to Improve Fruit and Vegetable Intake in Australia
title Food Co-Operatives: A Potential Community-Based Strategy to Improve Fruit and Vegetable Intake in Australia
title_full Food Co-Operatives: A Potential Community-Based Strategy to Improve Fruit and Vegetable Intake in Australia
title_fullStr Food Co-Operatives: A Potential Community-Based Strategy to Improve Fruit and Vegetable Intake in Australia
title_full_unstemmed Food Co-Operatives: A Potential Community-Based Strategy to Improve Fruit and Vegetable Intake in Australia
title_short Food Co-Operatives: A Potential Community-Based Strategy to Improve Fruit and Vegetable Intake in Australia
title_sort food co-operatives: a potential community-based strategy to improve fruit and vegetable intake in australia
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7312496/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32532100
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17114154
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