Retail openings help improve the nation's diet

It may seem like a simple equation, but scientists at Southampton University in the UK have categorically shown it to be true. The opening of a major new food retail outlet in an area with previously poor access to food shops can help improve the diet of the local community.

It may seem like a simple equation, but scientists at Southampton University in the UK have categorically shown it to be true. The opening of a major new food retail outlet in an area with previously poor access to food shops can help improve the diet of the local community.

The findings, presented yesterday by the study's co-author Professor Neil Wrigley at the British Association for the Advancement of Science, appear to show that the UK government's policy of promoting small-scale, local community-based retailers as the best way of dealing with so-called 'food deserts' may not in fact be the best solution to the problem.

"This is an important finding on a topic in which policy development has run ahead of systematic evidence-based research," said Professor Wrigley.

The study was commissioned three years ago to investigate links between access to food and food poverty in food deserts, a phrase coined in the late 1990s to denote urban neighbourhoods with poor access to healthy affordable food. Such areas are generally deprived with run down shopping centres and few remaining food shops. The study was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and Sainsbury's.

A team of scientists from Southampton, Leeds and Cardiff involved in geography, public health nutrition and city and regional planning focused their research on the Seacroft/Whinmoor area of Leeds, a deprived local authority housing estate area of around 15,000 households, which in the 1990s had a severely degraded district shopping centre and extremely poor levels of retail food provision.

When a leading food retailer was given planning permission to demolish the Seacroft shopping centre and rebuild around a new superstore, the opportunity arose for a comprehensive study of patterns of food consumption of local residents both before and after the arrival of the new store - the first study in the UK of food consumption patterns (and by extension diet-related health) in a deprived, previously poor-retail-access community experiencing a sudden and significant change in access.

"Based on a study of over 600 households, we found evidence of both direct and indirect improvements in the diets of some groups as a result of the opening of this large-scale retail outlet," said Professor Wrigley.

"Using the level of fruit and vegetable consumption as a measure of a healthy diet, we found that respondents classified as having poor diets prior to the new store opening increased their fruit and vegetable consumption by one-third after the opening - and that switching of food purchasing to the new store was associated with an improvement in diet," he added.

"Although the changes in diet recorded were relatively small, and the average fruit and vegetable consumption levels of the majority of people in this deprived area remain significantly below government recommended levels, we believe this is the first UK evidence that a retail intervention in a previously poor food access area can have a positive impact on diet.

"Our findings have potential policy implications for retail planning and debates concerning local-community-based versus large-scale corporate regeneration scheme solutions to food poverty. They also raise questions about appropriate policy responses to the improvement of diet-related health."

The Food Deserts in British Cities project is continuing, with researchers currently exploring more qualitative aspects of the retail intervention in Seacroft, and the impact of the intervention on other areas of Leeds.

The preliminary results of the study will make interesting reading for retailers and planners alike. Supermarkets in the UK are increasingly becoming much more than just food stores, offering a much wider range of non-food items and services for the community - from dry cleaning to video rental.

Much has been said about the loss of communities in the UK and the steady decline of local commerce, but the government's apparent insistence that this type of retailing offers the best means of restoring communities' health and well-being may well prove to be misfounded.