Apples and oranges? Classifying food retailers in a midwestern US city based on the availability of fresh produce.

摘要

Classifying food retailers is an important step in spatial analyses of food environments for public health research, but current classification methods would benefit from refinement. This study classified 94 retailers in Lansing, Michigan, USA, based on the availability of 446 produce items. The classification was compared to groupings based on physical characteristics of stores, which provide indirect information on food availability and are widely used to classify food retailers. Some justification was found for 3 commonly used categories (supermarket, grocer and convenience store). However, additional categories of ethnic food specialist and organic specialist grocers were necessary to summarise variation in food availability, which correlated weakly with physical characteristics of stores.