Concepts, Characterizations, and Cautions: A Public Health Guide and Glossary for Planning Food Environment Measurement

Background: There is no singular approach to measuring the food environment suitable for all studies. Understanding terminology, methodology, and common issues is crucial to choosing the best approach.

Objective: This review is designed to support a shared understanding so diverse multi-institutional teams engaged in food environment measurement can justify their measurement choices and have informed discussions about reasons for measurement strategies to vary across projects.

Methods: This guide defines key terms and provides annotated resources identified as a useful starting point for exploring the food environment literature. The writing team was an academic-practice collaboration, reflecting on the experience of a multi-institutional team focused on retail environments across the US relevant to cardiovascular disease.

Results: Terms and annotated resources are divided into three sections: food environment constructs, classification and measures, and errors and strategies to reduce error. Two examples of methods and challenges encountered while measuring the food environment in the context of a US health department are provided. Researchers and practice professionals are directed to the Food Environment Electronic Database Directory (https://www.foodenvironmentdirectory.com/) for comparing available data resources for food environment measurement, focused on the US; this resource incorporates updates informed by user input and literature reviews.

Discussion: Measuring the food environment is complex and risks oversimplification. This guide serves as a starting point but only partially captures some aspects of neighborhood food environment measurement.

Conclusions: No single food environment measure or data source meets all research and practice objectives. This shared starting point can facilitate theoretically grounded food environment measurement.