Читать книгу Hidden Hunger and the Transformation of Food Systems - Группа авторов - Страница 54

While there is a good body of literature on interventions regarding the food environment focusing on supermarkets and adults for the USA and other high-income countries, analyses for LMICs and/or including children and adolescents are very scarce. Hartmann-Boyce et at. [25] systematically reviewed randomized controlled trials and the changes in purchasing and consumption due to supermarket interventions. They found economic interventions, including discounts and vouchers, especially if enhanced by additional promotional activity, the most promising to change consumer behavior towards more healthy food purchases and consumption. The positive effects on behavior change are consistent for different levels of socioeconomic status. Findings by Adam and Jensen [26] underline these results. In their systematic review, they identified economic incentives, including price discounts, vouchers, and subsidies, as one of the strongest tools to change people’s purchase and consumption behavior towards healthier food choices. Besides changes in prices, Hartmann-Boyce et al. [25] predict promising effects through interventions on food swamps with healthier food options. Other interventions, like changing the store environment, including the placing and availability of food items, show mixed effects, and interventions that focus only on consumer education findings are positive in simulated environments, but no effects are detected in real store settings. The latter is partly confirmed by Adam and Jensen [26]; they found less than half of all studies focusing on information interventions to be effective in increasing the sales of healthy foods. Without looking into prices, Cameron et al. [27] identified shelf labeling (particularly using nutrition summary scores) as being particularly promising in regard to changes towards healthier food choices.

Overall, supermarket interventions, combining demand- and supply-side strategies, can be effective in changing people’s purchase and dietary behavior towards more healthy food choices [26, 28, 29]. However, translating the existing evidence into effects on levels of BMI or overweight/obesity is difficult. Furthermore, while the available reviews provide a good start for possible discussion and an overview of existing interventions, only a couple of studies looked at children, and only three of the studies were carried out in LMICs (one in Africa). This underlines an urgent need for further research in this area in different geographical and socioeconomic contexts.