TY - JOUR
T1 - Integrating human activity into food environments can better predict cardiometabolic diseases in the United States
AU - Xu, Ran
AU - Huang, Xiao
AU - Zhang, Kai
AU - Lyu, Weixuan
AU - Ghosh, Debarchana
AU - Li, Zhenlong
AU - Chen, Xiang
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s).
PY - 2023/12
Y1 - 2023/12
N2 - The prevalence of cardiometabolic diseases in the United States is presumably linked to an obesogenic retail food environment that promotes unhealthy dietary habits. Past studies, however, have reported inconsistent findings about the relationship between the two. One underexplored area is how humans interact with food environments and how to integrate human activity into scalable measures. In this paper, we develop the retail food activity index (RFAI) at the census tract level by utilizing Global Positioning System tracking data covering over 94 million aggregated visit records to approximately 359,000 food retailers across the United States over two years. Here we show that the RFAI has significant associations with the prevalence of multiple cardiometabolic diseases. Our study indicates that the RFAI is a promising index with the potential for guiding the development of policies and health interventions aimed at curtailing the burden of cardiometabolic diseases, especially in communities characterized by obesogenic dietary behaviors.
AB - The prevalence of cardiometabolic diseases in the United States is presumably linked to an obesogenic retail food environment that promotes unhealthy dietary habits. Past studies, however, have reported inconsistent findings about the relationship between the two. One underexplored area is how humans interact with food environments and how to integrate human activity into scalable measures. In this paper, we develop the retail food activity index (RFAI) at the census tract level by utilizing Global Positioning System tracking data covering over 94 million aggregated visit records to approximately 359,000 food retailers across the United States over two years. Here we show that the RFAI has significant associations with the prevalence of multiple cardiometabolic diseases. Our study indicates that the RFAI is a promising index with the potential for guiding the development of policies and health interventions aimed at curtailing the burden of cardiometabolic diseases, especially in communities characterized by obesogenic dietary behaviors.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41467-023-42667-8
DO - 10.1038/s41467-023-42667-8
M3 - Article
C2 - 37957191
AN - SCOPUS:85176380896
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 14
JO - Nature communications
JF - Nature communications
IS - 1
M1 - 7326
ER -