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Globalization of Western Food Culture: Impact on Obesity and Food Insecurity

A special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601). This special issue belongs to the section "Health Behavior, Chronic Disease and Health Promotion".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (9 February 2019) | Viewed by 12108

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Alice S. Ammerman

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Nutrition, Gillings School of Global Public Health and School of Medicine, Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA
Prof. Dr. Stephen B. Thomas

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Health Services Administration, School of Public Health and Maryland Center for Health Equity, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA
Interests: race, ethnicity and health disparities research
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Robert T. Jackson

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Food Science and Nutrition, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA
Mr. David Yates

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Children's Healthy Weight Research Group, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are organizing a Special Issue on “Globalization of Western Food Culture: Impact on Obesity and Food Insecurity” in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. The venue is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that publishes articles and communications in the interdisciplinary area of environmental health sciences and public health. For detailed information on the journal, we refer you to https://0-www-mdpi-com.brum.beds.ac.uk/journal/ijerph. 

One of the most profound results of globalization has been the rapid rise in the number of Western-style fast food outlets, brands and marketing around the world. The world’s largest fast food restaurant company, Yum! Brands Inc., operates nearly 38,000 restaurants (including KFC and Pizza Hut) around the world in more than 110 countries and territories, with over 4650 fast food outlets in China alone. Globally, there are more than 33,000 McDonald’s outlets in 119 countries and territories, serving around 68 million customers daily. In parallel with the increasing consumption of fast food, processed food and soft drinks around the world, obesity and type 2 diabetes have become global problems, afflicting countries wealthy and poor. 

The concurrent spread of Western-style fast food and the epidemic of cardio-metabolic related diseases have raised an important public health question: To what extent does the increased consumption of Western-style fast food contribute to cardio-metabolic diseases, disrupt local food culture, add new burdens to health care delivery systems, create new jobs and economic opportunity, and impact food insecurity?

We are inviting academics, food industry researchers and higher degree students conducting research on food and nutrition insecurity in developed countries to submit abstracts for consideration in this Special Issue of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

We especially welcome multi-disciplinary research in the area of food and nutrition security, both quantitative and qualitative including, but not limited to, the following areas:

  • Agro-industrialization, Globalization, and International Development
  • Behavioral Interventions
  • Body Weight and Body Image
  • Community-Based Interventions
  • Country Case Studies
  • Culture and Global Food System
  • Diffusion of Fast Food Outlets Worldwide
  • Economic Development Policy
  • Employment, Poverty, and the Natural Environment
  • Fast Food vs. Consumption of Low-Energy, Nutrient-Dense Foods
  • Food Subsidy Policy
  • Globalization Effects on Agricultural food systems
  • Impact of Marketing Practices on Consumer Food Patterns
  • Local Food Culture
  • Neighborhood Exposure to Supermarkets and Fast Food Outlets
  • Role of Social Media

Prof. Dr. Alice S. Ammerman
Prof. Dr. Stephen B. Thomas
Prof. Dr. Robert T. Jackson
Mr. David Yates
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Obesity
  • Food insecurity
  • Cardiometabolic disease
  • Western fast food
  • Processed food
  • Food culture

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

23 pages, 5214 KiB  
Article
Staple Food Item Availability among Small Retailers in Providence, RI
by Yuyao Huang, Alison Tovar, John Taylor and Maya Vadiveloo
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2019, 16(6), 1052; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/ijerph16061052 - 23 Mar 2019
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2909
Abstract
Inventory requirements for authorized Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) retailers have undergone several revisions to increase the availability of healthful foods. A proposed rule of 84 staple food items was not implemented due to concerns that stores would not withstand this expansion, resulting [...] Read more.
Inventory requirements for authorized Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) retailers have undergone several revisions to increase the availability of healthful foods. A proposed rule of 84 staple food items was not implemented due to concerns that stores would not withstand this expansion, resulting in a final rule requiring 36 items. This study used the Food Access Research Atlas data to characterize food provisions in 30 small retailers in areas with high and low proportions of SNAP and racial minority residents in Providence, Rhode Island (RI). Stores were assessed with an audit instrument to tally variety, perishability, and depth of stock of four staple food categories. Descriptive, analysis of variance, and chi-square analyses were performed. Across stores, 80% were compliant with the final rule, but 66.7% would need to expand their offerings to meet the proposed rule. Mean dairy variety was lowest among all categories (p < 0.05). Most stores met the perishability (92.3%) and depth-of-stock requirements (96.1%) under both rules. No difference was detected between areas with high and low proportions of SNAP and racial minority residents. Future expansion of requirements may increase healthful food availability without imposing undue burdens on retailers in Providence, RI, excluding increased requirements for dairy variety. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Globalization of Western Food Culture: Impact on Obesity and Food Insecurity)
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8 pages, 1698 KiB  
Article
Census Tract Food Tweets and Chronic Disease Outcomes in the U.S., 2015–2018
by Yuru Huang, Dina Huang and Quynh C. Nguyen
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2019, 16(6), 975; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/ijerph16060975 - 18 Mar 2019
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 3608
Abstract
There is a growing recognition of social media data as being useful for understanding local area patterns. In this study, we sought to utilize geotagged tweets—specifically, the frequency and type of food mentions—to understand the neighborhood food environment and the social modeling of [...] Read more.
There is a growing recognition of social media data as being useful for understanding local area patterns. In this study, we sought to utilize geotagged tweets—specifically, the frequency and type of food mentions—to understand the neighborhood food environment and the social modeling of food behavior. Additionally, we examined associations between aggregated food-related tweet characteristics and prevalent chronic health outcomes at the census tract level. We used a Twitter streaming application programming interface (API) to continuously collect ~1% random sample of public tweets in the United States. A total of 4,785,104 geotagged food tweets from 71,844 census tracts were collected from April 2015 to May 2018. We obtained census tract chronic disease outcomes from the CDC 500 Cities Project. We investigated associations between Twitter-derived food variables and chronic outcomes (obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure) using the median regression. Census tracts with higher average calories per tweet, less frequent healthy food mentions, and a higher percentage of food tweets about fast food had higher obesity and hypertension prevalence. Twitter-derived food variables were not predictive of diabetes prevalence. Food-related tweets can be leveraged to help characterize the neighborhood social and food environment, which in turn are linked with community levels of obesity and hypertension. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Globalization of Western Food Culture: Impact on Obesity and Food Insecurity)
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12 pages, 311 KiB  
Article
Nutrient Profiling and Child-Targeted Supermarket Foods: Assessing a “Made in Canada” Policy Approach
by Charlene Elliott and Natalie V. Scime
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2019, 16(4), 639; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/ijerph16040639 - 21 Feb 2019
Cited by 18 | Viewed by 4770
Abstract
Marketing unhealthy food and beverages to children is a pervasive problem despite the negative impact it has on children’s taste preferences, eating habits and health. In an effort to mitigate this influence on Canadian children, Health Canada has developed a nutrient profile model [...] Read more.
Marketing unhealthy food and beverages to children is a pervasive problem despite the negative impact it has on children’s taste preferences, eating habits and health. In an effort to mitigate this influence on Canadian children, Health Canada has developed a nutrient profile model with two options for national implementation. This study examined the application of Health Canada’s proposed model to 374 child-targeted supermarket products collected in Calgary, AB, Canada and compared this with two international nutrient profile models. Products were classified as permitted or not permitted for marketing to children using the Health Canada model (Option 1 and Option 2), the WHO Regional Office for Europe model, and the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) model. Results were summarized using descriptive statistics. Overall, Health Canada’s Option 1 was the most stringent, permitting only 2.7% of products to be marketed to children, followed by PAHO (7.0%), WHO (11.8%), and Health Canada’s Option 2 (28.6%). Across all models, six products (1.6%) were universally permitted, and nearly 60% of products were universally not permitted on the basis of nutritional quality. Such differences in classification have significant policy and health-related consequences, given that different foods will be framed as “acceptable” for marketing to children—and understood as more or less healthy—depending on the model used. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Globalization of Western Food Culture: Impact on Obesity and Food Insecurity)
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