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© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

Increasing rates of childhood obesity worldwide has focused attention on the obesogenic food environment. This paper reports an analysis of children’s interactions with food in convenience stores. Kids’Cam was a cross-sectional study conducted from July 2014 to June 2015 in New Zealand in which 168 randomly selected children aged 11–14 years old wore a wearable camera for a 4–day period. In this ancillary study, images from children who visited a convenience store were manually coded for food and drink availability. Twenty-two percent of children (n = 37) visited convenience stores on 62 occasions during the 4-day data collection period. Noncore items dominated the food and drinks available to children at a rate of 8.3 to 1 (means were 300 noncore and 36 core, respectively). The food and drinks marketed in-store were overwhelmingly noncore and promoted using accessible placement, price offers, product packaging, and signage. Most of the 70 items purchased by children were noncore foods or drinks (94.6%), and all of the purchased food or drink subsequently consumed was noncore. This research highlights convenience stores as a key source of unhealthy food and drink for children, and policies are needed to reduce the role of convenience stores in the obesogenic food environment.

Details

Title
Kids in a Candy Store: An Objective Analysis of Children’s Interactions with Food in Convenience Stores
Author
McKerchar, Christina 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Smith, Moira 2 ; Gage, Ryan 2 ; Williman, Jonathan 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Abel, Gillian 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Lacey, Cameron 3 ; Cliona Ni Mhurchu 4   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Signal, Louise 2 

 Department of Population Health, University of Otago, Christchurch 8140, New Zealand; [email protected] (J.W.); [email protected] (G.A.) 
 Health Promotion and Policy Research Unit, Department of Public Health, University of Otago, Wellington 6242, New Zealand; [email protected] (M.S.); [email protected] (R.G.); [email protected] (L.S.) 
 Māori and Indigenous Health Institute, Department of the Psychological Medicine, University of Otago, Christchurch 8140, New Zealand; [email protected] 
 National Institute for Health Innovation, University of Auckland, Auckland 1142, New Zealand; [email protected] 
First page
2143
Publication year
2020
Publication date
2020
Publisher
MDPI AG
e-ISSN
20726643
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2700193252
Copyright
© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.