Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

There is an increasing amount of evidence that urban activity patterns can facilitate or restrict a person's ability to acquire and consume different types of foods, and thereby their health. Given this, it is important to develop a thorough understanding of how exposure to urban food retail environments over time and across space influences dietary decisions for various demographic groups. While past studies have begun to acquire data that describe activity patterns through various sources (e.g. GPS), they tend to be limited by 1) data collection periods being of insufficient length (e.g. 1 - 3 days) to understand food shopping habits, 2) relatively small sample sizes, 3) populations with variable demographics, and 4) focusing on a single city or region. The research presented here will use data from a GPS subsample of the national Canada Food Study, conducted in 2016 and focused on 16-30 year olds, to address some of these issues. Records of approximately 450 young adult participants, collected for one week across five Canadian cities (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Edmonton, and Halifax) are used to explicitly address the links between activity patterns, the food retail environment, and food shopping behaviours. In addition to the seven days of GPS data and food purchasing data, we have variables from an in-depth survey on participants' dietary history and health. With this integrated dataset, three primary questions will be answered: First, what socioeconomic variables affect the count of different types of food retailers in participants' activity spaces? Second, does exposure to a larger quantity and variety of food retailers affect participants' use of particular types of food retailers? Third, is there a significant relationship that exists between access to different types of food retailers, use of those retailers, and health?