Where do people purchase food?

A pilot study on food purchasing locations over a two week period was undertaken in Melbourne, Australia. Fifty-six participants recorded details on all food purchases made over a two-week period including name and address of... [ view full abstract ]

A pilot study on food purchasing locations over a two week period was undertaken in Melbourne, Australia. Fifty-six participants recorded details on all food purchases made over a two-week period including name and address of store, where they were prior to making the purchase (home, work, other), and primary mode of transport to the store (e.g. car, public transport, walk/cycle). Data on the participants’ household address, workplace postal code, and the stores where they made food purchases were geocoded in ArcGIS 10.2 and the network distance between the food store and their home/work address was calculated. A total of 929 food purchases were recorded. These were a median distance of 6.8km (IQR 3.6 – 13.3) from participants’ household location with supermarket purchases occurring slightly closer to home (median 6.0km (IQR 3.3 – 10.3)). When home was reported as the location prior to visiting the store, this made little difference to the median distance between home and food store visited (median 6.3km; IQR 3.2 – 14.5). Amongst those that work, food purchasing locations were found to be a median distance of 6.1km (IQR 2.3 – 14.8) from the workplace although were noticeably shorter when workplace was reported as the prior location (median 2.3km; IQR 0.9 – 11.7). Understanding how and where individuals access food is useful in informing our thinking on the appropriateness of using narrowly-focussed neighbourhood exposure measures when trying to understand the role of food environments on food purchasing behaviours.