Development and testing of two tools to assess point-of-sale food and beverage marketing to children in restaurants.

Objective: To describe the development and testing of two assessment tools designed to assess exterior (including drive-thru) and interior food and beverage marketing in restaurants with a focus on marketing to children and teens.

Design: A scoping review on restaurant marketing to children was undertaken, followed by expert and government consultations to produce a draft assessment tool. The draft tool was mounted online and further refined into two separate tools: the Canadian Marketing Assessment Tool for Restaurants (CMAT-R) and the CMAT-Photo Coding Tool (CMAT-PCT).

Food environment research in Canada: a rapid review of methodologies and measures deployed between 2010 and 2021.

Numerous research methodologies have been used to examine food environments. Existing reviews synthesizing food environment measures have examined a limited number of domains or settings and none have specifically targeted Canada. This rapid review aimed to 1) map research methodologies and measures that have been used to assess food environments; 2) examine what food environment dimensions and equity related-factors have been assessed; and 3) identify research gaps and priorities to guide future research.

The Influence of the School Neighborhood Food Retail Environment on Unhealthy Food Purchasing Behaviors Among Adolescents: A Systematic Review.

Introduction: Adolescents are often exposed to food retailers selling unhealthy food items during their lunch breaks and school commutes. This systematic review examines the influence of school neighborhood food retail environments on adolescent food purchasing.

Methods: A systematic search of 6 databases.

The British Columbia Farmers' Market Nutrition Coupon Program Reduces Short-Term Household Food Insecurity Among Adults With Low Incomes: A Pragmatic Randomized Controlled Trial.

Background: The British Columbia Farmers' Market Nutrition Coupon Program (BC FMNCP) provides households with low incomes with coupons to purchase healthy foods from farmers' markets.

Objective: To examine the impact of the BC FMNCP on the short-term household food insecurity, malnutrition risk, mental well-being, sense of community (secondary outcomes), and subjective social status (exploratory outcome) of adults with low incomes post-intervention and 16 weeks post-intervention.

Design: Secondary analyses from a pragmatic randomized controlled trial conducted in 2019 that collected data at baseline, post-intervention, and 16 weeks post-intervention.

"No one went into pharmacy … to sell a lot of Coca-Cola. It's just sort of a necessary evil" - Community pharmacists' perceptions of front-of-store sales and ethical tensions in the retail environment.

Background: Community pharmacists are expected to uphold ethical duties to patients and society while maintaining independent businesses or fulfilling expectations of corporate owners. Canadian pharmacy colleges provide only indirect guidance on the retail setting of the profession. Little is known about whether pharmacists identify ethical issues in retail pharmacy or around the sales of non-drug products.

Breakfast Consumption and Diet Quality of Teens in Southwestern Ontario.

Background: Breakfast skipping has previously been associated with worse diet quality among adolescents; the latter increases the risk of chronic disease. However, many studies do not consider diet quality as a function of calories, which is problematic as skippers tend to consume less energy than consumers. Additionally, due to the lack of one accepted definition of both breakfast skipping and diet quality, it is unclear how differences found may change when using varying definitions.

Neighborhood Fast-Food Environments and Hypertension in Canadian Adults.

Introduction: Hypertension is a leading cause of cardiovascular disease and premature death worldwide. Neighborhoods characterized by a high proportion of fast-food outlets may also contribute to hypertension in residents; however, limited research has explored these associations. This cross-sectional study assessed the associations between neighborhood fast-food environments, measured hypertension, and self-reported hypertension.

The contribution of modifiable risk factors to socioeconomic inequities in cardiovascular disease morbidity and mortality: A nationally representative population-based cohort study.

This study examined the individual and joint effects of modifiable risk factors mediating the associations between socioeconomic position (SEP) and morbidity and mortality from cardiovascular diseases (CVD) in a nationally representative sample of adults in Canada. Participants in the Canadian Community Health Survey (n = 289,800) were followed longitudinally for CVD morbidity and mortality using administrative health and mortality data. SEP was measured as a latent variable consisting of household income and individual educational attainment.

Impact of a farmers' market healthy food subsidy on the diet quality of adults with low incomes in British Columbia, Canada: a pragmatic randomized controlled trial.

Background: Adults with low incomes have lower diet quality than their higher income counterparts. In Canada, the British Columbia Farmers' Market Nutrition Coupon Program (FMNCP) provides coupons to low-income households to purchase healthy foods in farmers' markets.

Objective: The objective of this study was to examine the impact of the FMNCP on the diet quality of adults with low incomes.

Implementation of a food retail intervention to reduce purchase of unhealthy food and beverages in remote Australia: mixed-method evaluation using the consolidated framework for implementation research.

Background: Adoption of health-enabling food retail interventions in food retail will require effective implementation strategies. To inform this, we applied an implementation framework to a novel real-world food retail intervention, the Healthy Stores 2020 strategy, to identify factors salient to intervention implementation from the perspective of the food retailer.

Methods: A convergent mixed-method design was used and data were interpreted using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR).

Who's cooking tonight? A time-use study of coupled adults in Toronto, Canada.

Understanding how coupled adults arrange food-related labor in relation to their daily time allocation is of great importance because different arrangements may have implications for diet-related health and gender equity. Studies from the time-use perspective argue that daily activities such as work, caregiving, and non-food-related housework can potentially compete for time with foodwork. However, studies in this regard are mostly centered on individual-level analyses.

Urban design and adolescent mental health: A qualitative examination of adolescent emotional responses to pedestrian- and transit-oriented design and cognitive architecture concepts.

With the continued migration of people into cities, urban environments are becoming increasingly important determinants of health. However, the study of how precise environmental designs are linked to mental health are generally lacking, especially among adolescent populations. Using a qualitative approach featuring 23 go-along interviews with adolescents, we investigated the relationships between specific urban designs as outlined in pedestrian- and transit-oriented design (imageability, enclosure, scale, transparency, complexity) and cognitive architecture (biophilic architecture, symmetries, fractals) concepts and adolescent mental health indicators (i.

A systematic review of trucking food, physical activity, and tobacco environments and tractor-trailer drivers' related patterns and practices in the United States and Canada, 1993-2021.

Truckers in the United States (U.S.) and Canada are at high risk for noncommunicable disease.

Are stress-related pathways of social status differentiation more important determinants of health inequities in countries with higher levels of income inequality?

We explored socioeconomic gradients in self-rated overall health (SROH) using indicators of materialist (educational attainment and perceived income adequacy) and psychosocial perspectives (subjective social status (SSS)) among adults living in countries with varying levels of income inequality, and the importance of psychosocial stress in mediating these associations. If psychosocial processes at the individual and societal levels correspond, associations between SSS and SROH should be higher among adults in countries with higher income inequality, and psychosocial stress should be a more important mediator of these associations. We used multigroup structural equation models to analyse cross-sectional data from the International Food Policy Study of adults (n = 22,824) in Australia, Canada, Mexico, the UK and the United States.

A pan-Canadian dataset of neighbourhood retail food environment measures using Statistics Canada's Business Register.

Background: The objective of this study was to create the Canadian Food Environment Dataset (Can-FED) and to demonstrate its validity.

Data And Methods: Food outlet data were extracted from Statistics Canada's Business Register (BR) in 2018. Retail food environment access measures (both absolute and relative measures) were calculated using network buffers around the centroid of 56,589 dissemination areas in Canada.

Built environment influences on healthy eating and active living: The NEWPATH study.

Objective: The Neighbourhood Environments in Waterloo: Patterns of Active Transportation and Health (NEWPATH) study examined built environment influences on travel, physical activity, food consumption, and health. This collaboration between researchers and practitioners in health and transportation planning is the first, to our knowledge, to integrate food purchasing, diet, travel, and objectively measured physical activity into a trip-destination protocol. This study simultaneously examines diet and physical activity relationships with BMI and waist circumference (WC).

Stress-Related Poor Diet Quality Does Not Explain Socioeconomic Inequities in Health: A Structural Equation Mediation Analysis of Gender-Specific Pathways.

Background: Psychosocial stress and diet quality individually mediate associations between socioeconomic position (SEP) and health; however, it is not known whether they jointly mediate these associations. This is an important question because stress-related unhealthy eating is often invoked as an explanation for diet-related health inequities, particularly among women, seemingly with no empirical justification.

Objective: This study examined whether psychosocial stress and diet quality jointly mediated associations between SEP and self-rated health in women and men.

Trends in Socioeconomic Inequities in Diet Quality between 2004 and 2015 among a Nationally Representative Sample of Children in Canada.

Background: Dietary inequities in childhood may shape dietary and health inequities across the life course. Quantifying the magnitude and direction of trends in absolute and relative gaps and gradients in diet quality according to multiple indicators of socioeconomic position (SEP) can inform strategies to narrow these inequities.

Objectives: We examined trends in absolute and relative gaps and gradients in diet quality between 2004 and 2015 according to 3 indicators of SEP among a nationally representative sample of children in Canada.

Socioeconomic inequities in diet quality among a nationally representative sample of adults living in Canada: an analysis of trends between 2004 and 2015.

Background: Socioeconomic inequities in diet quality are stable or widening in the United States; however, these trends have not been well characterized in other nations. Moreover, purpose-developed indices of inequities that can provide a more comprehensive and precise perspective of trends in absolute and relative dietary gaps and gradients using multiple indicators of socioeconomic position (SEP) have not yet been used, and can inform strategies to narrow dietary inequities.

Objectives: We quantified nationally representative trends in absolute and relative gaps and gradients in diet quality between 2004 and 2015 according to 3 indicators of SEP among adults in Canada.

Investigating the mental health implications of urban environments with neuroscientific methods and mobile technologies: A systematic literature review.

Urbanization is an ongoing global process that is influencing and shaping individual mental health and well-being. This paper aims to provide an overview of the current literature containing state-of-the-art neuroscientific and mobile technologies that have been used to investigate the mental health implications of urban environments. Searches for peer-reviewed primary research articles were conducted in PubMed and SCOPUS, returning 33,443 papers; 90 empirical articles published from 1981 to 2021 were included in the final synthesis.

Life stories of food agency, health, and resilience in a rapidly gentrifying urban centre: Building a multidimensional concept of food access.

Few studies examine how geographic and non-geographic elements of food access intersect. The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore the relationship between food access, food security, health, and gentrification in the rapidly gentrifying urban centre of Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 low-income, longtime residents of Kitchener-Waterloo, and five key informants in the region.

Quantifying the contribution of modifiable risk factors to socio-economic inequities in cancer morbidity and mortality: a nationally representative population-based cohort study.

Background: Compared with those with a higher socio-economic position (SEP), individuals with a lower SEP have higher cancer morbidity and mortality. However, the contribution of modifiable risk factors to these inequities is not known. This study aimed to quantify the mediating effects of modifiable risk factors to associations between SEP and cancer morbidity and mortality.

Geographic reach and nutritional quality of foods available from mobile online food delivery service applications: novel opportunities for retail food environment surveillance.

Background: Online Food Delivery Services (OFDS) have rapidly expanded in North America, but their implications for geographic access to food and potential dietary outcomes of their use are poorly understood. The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which OFDS may geographically expand retail food environments. A secondary objective is to evaluate the healthfulness of foods available on mobile OFDS in a large Canadian city using the Healthy Eating Index-2015 (HEI-2015).

How Do Urban Environments Affect Young People's Mental Health? A Novel Conceptual Framework to Bridge Public Health, Planning, and Neurourbanism.

Childhood and adolescence are crucial periods for mental and social development. Currently, mental illness among young people is a global epidemic, and rates of disorders such as depression and anxiety are rising. Urban living, compared with rural living, is linked with a higher risk of serious mental illness, which is important because the world is urbanizing faster than ever before.

Development and testing of the Sustainable Nutrition Environment Measures Survey for retail stores in Ontario.

Objective: To develop and test a tool to assess the price and availability of low-carbon footprint and nutritionally balanced dietary patterns in retail food environments in Ontario, Canada.

Design: Availability and price of selected food from discount and regular grocery stores (n 23) in urban/rural areas of northern/southern Ontario were assessed with the Sustainable Nutrition Environment Measures Survey in 2017.

Setting: Ontario, Canada.