Food Environment Typology: Advancing an Expanded Definition, Framework, and Methodological Approach for Improved Characterization of Wild, Cultivated, and Built Food Environments toward Sustainable Diets

Abstract

The food environment is a critical place in the food system to implement interventions to support sustainable diets and address the global syndemic of obesity, undernutrition, and climate change, because it contains the total scope of options within which consumers make decisions about which foods to acquire and consume. In this paper, we build on existing definitions of the food environment, and provide an expanded definition that includes the parameter of sustainability properties of foods and beverages, in order to integrate linkages between food environments and sustainable diets. We further provide a graphical representation of the food environment using a socio-ecological framework. Next, we provide a typology with descriptions of the different types of food environments that consumers have access to in low-, middle-, and high-income countries including wild, cultivated, and built food environments. We characterize the availability, affordability, convenience, promotion and quality (previously termed desirability), and sustainability properties of food and beverages for each food environment type. Lastly, we identify a methodological approach with potential objective and subjective tools and metrics for measuring the different properties of various types of food environments. The definition, framework, typology, and methodological toolbox presented here are intended to facilitate scholars and practitioners to identify entry points in the food environment for implementing and evaluating interventions that support sustainable diets for enhancing human and planetary health.

Keywords: built food environments; climate change; natural food environments; socio-ecological framework; sustainable diets.

Figure 1

Positioning the food environment within the broader food system based on a socio-ecological model. The layers closest to diets (i.e., individual factors and food environments) include the structures and processes which individuals directly interact with in their immediate surroundings. The outer layers (i.e., sectors of influence, socio-cultural and political environment and ecosystems) are the more distal drivers influencing food environments, individual factors and diets.

Figure 2

Descriptions of the food environment key elements. The key elements of the food environment within the food system include the availability, affordability, convenience, promotion and quality, and sustainability of foods and beverages in wild, cultivated, and built spaces.

Figure 3

Food environment typology. There are two overarching types of food environments comprising the food environment typology including natural and built environments. These further comprise of wild, cultivated, informal market, and formal market food environments.

Figure 4

Transition of food environment typology with development. The types of food environments that communities and countries have access to may shift over time with development. This figure depicts how the food environment types change aligned to Popkin’s nutrition transition [4]. A sixth pattern of food environment types was added to indicate a transition to societies with concerns for sustainable diets and planetary health (Pattern 6).