Overview
Food environment factors—such as store/restaurant proximity, food prices, food and nutrition assistance programs, and community characteristics—interact to influence food choices and diet quality. Research has been documenting the complexity of these interactions, but more research is needed to identify causal relationships and effective policy interventions.
The objectives of the Atlas are:
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to assemble statistics on food environment indicators to stimulate research on the determinants of food choices and diet quality, and
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to provide a spatial overview of a community's ability to access healthy food and its success in doing so.
Note: The Food Environment Atlas application now has an improved high-resolution map export capability, no longer requires the Flash plugin, and is iPad compatible.
For developers: grab the API.