Obesogenic urban food environments in Santiago, Chile: Perceptions from a cross-sectional study of two socioeconomically distinct neighborhoods

Abstract

Obesogenic food environments disproportionately affect low-socioeconomic-status (LSE) populations. Since 2016, Chile has categorized food environments into five domains: home, supply, street, organizational, and restaurant. However, no study has simultaneously assessed all five domains or compared their obesogenic levels across socioeconomic statuses.

This study compared the obesogenicity of the five food environments in two neighborhoods in Chile with different socioeconomic statuses. A cross-sectional design was employed, enrolling adults aged 18 or older who were responsible for household food shopping. Participants were randomly selected within neighborhoods and completed the shortened Chilean version of the NEMS-P. Weighted scores, divided into quintiles, assessed obesogenicity, with lower scores indicating more obesogenic environments.

There were 388 participants from an LSE neighborhood and 397 from a high-socioeconomic-status (HSE) neighborhood. Perceptions of the home and supply environments differed significantly. The HSE neighborhood had a higher median score for the home environment (8.3 vs. 6.9, p = 0.0007), with 23.2 % of participants in the highest quintile, compared to 23.7 % and 23.5 % of LSE participants in the lowest quintiles. For the supply environment, the HSE neighborhood scored higher (5.8 vs. 2.2, p = 0.0001), with over 50 % of HSE participants in higher quintiles versus 52.8 % of LSE participants in lower ones.

The LSE neighborhood exhibited more obesogenic food environments. These findings underscore the urgent need for public policies to transform food environments to reduce disparities in healthy food availability and access, particularly for vulnerable populations.