Project: Future foodscapes: how do we create healthier food environments?

Description

Funded by EWUU alliance

Healthy eating contributes to the prevention of many diseases such as obesity, cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Therefore, it is not surprising that much policy effort has focused on promoting a healthy diet as part of a healthy lifestyle. However, research shows that the effects of lifestyle interventions are limited. Consequently, options for structural changes to make the food environment (including the type of food offered in supermarkets, restaurants and cafes in an area) healthier are being increasingly looked at. If the food choices that people in their environment can make are healthier or there are less unhealthy options, this will stimulate healthy eating behavior and therefore improve the health of the population. Despite the recognized importance of healthy ‘foodscapes’, the food environment is becoming increasingly unhealthy.
Changes in the food supply in the environment are difficult to achieve and require, for example, changing regulations, enticing food suppliers to offer affordable healthier food, and encouraging project developers to enter into contracts with healthier food outlets. Understanding how the food environment influences healthy food choices and health helps accelerate and effectively shape these transformations. Insight into the relationship between different ways in which the ‘foodscapes’ (where exactly which type of outlet is located) in neighborhoods could be arranged and the expected eating behavior and health of residents is still lacking.
To fill this gap, we will develop an approach that allows us to make physical copies of neighborhoods in 3D (e.g. digital twins) in which we design different scenarios of food supply. We then use Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) as well as VR techniques and interviews with residents and professionals to predict how the scenarios presented in the digital twins influence the food outlets that people visit. Since the effect of foodscapes can differ between people in different stages of life and with different socio-economic positions, we will analyze the effects for groups separately.

Period	May 2023 → May 2024