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Food Outlet Access and the Healthiness of Food Available ‘On-Demand’ via Meal Delivery Apps in New Zealand

Access to unhealthy commodities is a key factor determining consumption, and therefore influences the prevalence of non-communicable diseases. Recently, there has been an increase in the availability of food ‘on-demand’ via meal delivery apps (MDAs). However, the public health and equity impacts of...

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Autores principales: Norriss, Dru, Crossin, Rose, Curl, Angela, Bidwell, Susan, Clark, Elinor, Pocock, Tessa, Gage, Ryan, McKerchar, Christina
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9607030/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36296912
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nu14204228
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author Norriss, Dru
Crossin, Rose
Curl, Angela
Bidwell, Susan
Clark, Elinor
Pocock, Tessa
Gage, Ryan
McKerchar, Christina
author_facet Norriss, Dru
Crossin, Rose
Curl, Angela
Bidwell, Susan
Clark, Elinor
Pocock, Tessa
Gage, Ryan
McKerchar, Christina
author_sort Norriss, Dru
collection PubMed
description Access to unhealthy commodities is a key factor determining consumption, and therefore influences the prevalence of non-communicable diseases. Recently, there has been an increase in the availability of food ‘on-demand’ via meal delivery apps (MDAs). However, the public health and equity impacts of this shift are not yet well understood. This study focused on three MDAs in New Zealand and aimed to answer (1) what is the health profile of the foods being offered on-demand, (2) how many food outlets are available and does this differ by physical access or neighbourhood demographics and (3) does the health profile of foods offered differ by physical access or neighbourhood demographics? A dataset was created by sampling a set of street addresses across a range of demographic variables, and recording the menu items and number of available outlets offered to each address. Machine learning was utilised to evaluate the healthiness of menu items, and we examined if healthiness and the number of available outlets varied by neighbourhood demographics. Over 75% of menu items offered by all MDAs were unhealthy and approximately 30% of all menu items across the three MDAs scored at the lowest level of healthiness. Statistically significant differences by demographics were identified in one of the three MDAs in this study, which suggested that the proportion of unhealthy foods offered was highest in areas with the greatest socioeconomic deprivation and those with a higher proportion of Māori population. Policy and regulatory approaches need to adapt to this novel mode of access to unhealthy foods, to mitigate public health consequences and the effects on population groups already more vulnerable to non-communicable diseases.
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spelling pubmed-96070302022-10-28 Food Outlet Access and the Healthiness of Food Available ‘On-Demand’ via Meal Delivery Apps in New Zealand Norriss, Dru Crossin, Rose Curl, Angela Bidwell, Susan Clark, Elinor Pocock, Tessa Gage, Ryan McKerchar, Christina Nutrients Article Access to unhealthy commodities is a key factor determining consumption, and therefore influences the prevalence of non-communicable diseases. Recently, there has been an increase in the availability of food ‘on-demand’ via meal delivery apps (MDAs). However, the public health and equity impacts of this shift are not yet well understood. This study focused on three MDAs in New Zealand and aimed to answer (1) what is the health profile of the foods being offered on-demand, (2) how many food outlets are available and does this differ by physical access or neighbourhood demographics and (3) does the health profile of foods offered differ by physical access or neighbourhood demographics? A dataset was created by sampling a set of street addresses across a range of demographic variables, and recording the menu items and number of available outlets offered to each address. Machine learning was utilised to evaluate the healthiness of menu items, and we examined if healthiness and the number of available outlets varied by neighbourhood demographics. Over 75% of menu items offered by all MDAs were unhealthy and approximately 30% of all menu items across the three MDAs scored at the lowest level of healthiness. Statistically significant differences by demographics were identified in one of the three MDAs in this study, which suggested that the proportion of unhealthy foods offered was highest in areas with the greatest socioeconomic deprivation and those with a higher proportion of Māori population. Policy and regulatory approaches need to adapt to this novel mode of access to unhealthy foods, to mitigate public health consequences and the effects on population groups already more vulnerable to non-communicable diseases. MDPI 2022-10-11 /pmc/articles/PMC9607030/ /pubmed/36296912 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nu14204228 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/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 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Norriss, Dru
Crossin, Rose
Curl, Angela
Bidwell, Susan
Clark, Elinor
Pocock, Tessa
Gage, Ryan
McKerchar, Christina
Food Outlet Access and the Healthiness of Food Available ‘On-Demand’ via Meal Delivery Apps in New Zealand
title Food Outlet Access and the Healthiness of Food Available ‘On-Demand’ via Meal Delivery Apps in New Zealand
title_full Food Outlet Access and the Healthiness of Food Available ‘On-Demand’ via Meal Delivery Apps in New Zealand
title_fullStr Food Outlet Access and the Healthiness of Food Available ‘On-Demand’ via Meal Delivery Apps in New Zealand
title_full_unstemmed Food Outlet Access and the Healthiness of Food Available ‘On-Demand’ via Meal Delivery Apps in New Zealand
title_short Food Outlet Access and the Healthiness of Food Available ‘On-Demand’ via Meal Delivery Apps in New Zealand
title_sort food outlet access and the healthiness of food available ‘on-demand’ via meal delivery apps in new zealand
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9607030/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36296912
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nu14204228
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