ABSTRACT
The concept of the local food environment focuses attention on the kinds of groceries and restaurants that are available in people’s neighborhoods. It challenges the unrealistic (and potentially detrimental and discriminatory) notion that education about what to eat necessarily improves mass nutrition. Although people with means who live in neighborhoods with healthy foods can change what they eat based on nutrition education (including commercial advertising), many people live where healthy foods are simply not readily available or unaffordable. The concept of the local food environment is an extension of the basic principle of public health that the most effective means for promoting behaviors that prevent disease and promote health are those that create environments in which it is easier for people to make healthy, rather than unhealthy, choices (Milio 1976).
