Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-xxrs7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T16:27:32.572Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Environmental determinants of fruit and vegetable consumption among adults: a systematic review

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 March 2007

Carlijn B. M. Kamphuis*
Affiliation:
Department of Public Health, Erasmus University Medical Centre, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Katrina Giskes
Affiliation:
Department of Public Health, Erasmus University Medical Centre, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Gert-Jan de Bruijn
Affiliation:
Department of Health Education and Health Promotion, Maastricht University, The Netherlands
Wanda Wendel-Vos
Affiliation:
Centre for Prevention and Health Services Research, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, The Netherlands
Johannes Brug
Affiliation:
Department of Public Health, Erasmus University Medical Centre, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Frank J. van Lenthe
Affiliation:
Department of Public Health, Erasmus University Medical Centre, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
*
*Corresponding author: Carlijn B. M. Kamphuis, fax +31 10 4089455, email c.kamphuis@erasmusmc.nl
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The current ecological approach in health behaviour research recognises that health behaviour needs to be understood in a broad environmental context. This has led to an exponential increase in the number of studies on this topic. It is the aim of this systematic review to summarise the existing empirical evidence pertaining to environmental influences on fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption. The environment was defined as ‘all factors external to the individual’. Scientific databases and reference lists of selected papers were systematically searched for observational studies among adults (18–60 years old), published in English between 1 January 1980 and 31 December 2004, with environmental factor(s) as independent factor(s), and fruit intake, vegetable intake or FV intake combined as one outcome measure as dependent factor(s). Findings showed there was a great diversity in the environmental factors studied, but that the number of replicated studies for each determinant was limited. Most evidence was found for household income, as people with lower household incomes consistently had a lower FV consumption. Married people had higher intakes than those who were single, whereas having children showed mixed results. Good local availability (e.g. access to one's own vegetable garden, having low food insecurity) seemed to exert a positive influence on intake. Regarding the development of interventions, improved opportunities for sufficient FV consumption among low-income households are likely to lead to improved intakes. For all other environmental factors, more replicated studies are required to examine their influence on FV intake.

Type
Systematic Review
Copyright
Copyright © The Nutrition Society 2006

References

Agudo, A, Amiano, P & Barcos, A, et al. (1999) Dietary intake of vegetables and fruits among adults in five regions of Spain. EPIC Group of Spain. European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition. Eur J Clin Nutr 53, 174180.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Angell, M (1989) Negative studies. N Engl J Med 321, 464466.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Billson, H, Pryer, JA & Nichols, R (1999) Variation in fruit and vegetable consumption among adults in Britain. An analysis from the dietary and nutritional survey of British adults. Eur J Clin Nutr 53, 946952.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Booth, SL, Sallis, JF & Ritenbaugh, C, et al. (2001) Environmental and societal factors affect food choice and physical activity: rationale, influences, and leverage points. Nutr Rev 59 S21–S39 discussion S57S65.Google ScholarPubMed
Brug, J, van Lenthe, FJ (2005) Environmental Determinants and Interventions for Physical Activity, Nutrition and Smoking: A Review. The Hague: ZonMW.Google Scholar
Cervero, R & Duncan, M (2003) Walking, bicycling, and urban landscapes: evidence from the San Francisco Bay Area. Am J Public Health 93, 14781483.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, DA, Scribner, RA & Farley, TA (2000) A structural model of health behavior: a pragmatic approach to explain and influence health behaviors at the population level. Prev Med 30, 146154.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cummins, S & Macintyre, S (2002) A systematic study of an urban foodscape: the price and availability of food in greater Glasgow. Urban Stud 39, 21152130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cummins, S & Macintyre, S (2006) Food environments and obesity – neighbourhood or nation? Int J Epidemiol 35, 100104.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Danaei, G, Vander Hoorn, S, Lopez, AD, Murray, CJ & Ezzati, M (2005) Causes of cancer in the world: comparative risk assessment of nine behavioural and environmental risk factors. Lancet 366, 17841793.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
De Bruijn, GJ, Kremers, SP, van Mechelen, W & Brug, J (2005) Is personality related to fruit and vegetable intake and physical activity in adolescents? Health Educ Res 20, 635644.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Devine, CM, Wolfe, WS, Frongillo, EA Jr & Bisogni, CA (1999) Life-course events and experiences: association with fruit and vegetable consumption in 3 ethnic groups. J Am Diet Assoc 99, 309314.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dibsdall, LA, Lambert, N, Bobbin, RF & Frewer, LJ (2003) Low-income consumers' attitudes and behaviour towards access, availability and motivation to eat fruit and vegetables. Public Health Nutr 6, 159168.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Diez-Roux, AV, Nieto, FJ, Caulfield, L, Tyroler, HA, Watson, RL & Szklo, M (1999) Neighbourhood differences in diet: the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Study. J Epidemiol Community Health 53, 5563.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Flay, BR & Petraitis, J (1994) The theory of triadic influence: a new theory of health behavior with implications for preventive interventions. In Advances in Medical Sociology. 1944 [Albrecht, GL and Fitzpatrick, R, editors]. London: JAI Press Inc.Google Scholar
Forsyth, A, Macintyre, S & Anderson, A (1994) Diets for disease? Intraurban variation in reported food consumption in Glasgow. Appetite 22, 259274.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gibney, M & Lee, P (1993) Patterns of food and nutrient intake in a suburb of Dublin with chronically high unemployment. J Hum Nutr Diet 6, 1322.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giles-Corti, B & Donovan, RJ (2002) The relative influence of individual, social and physical environment determinants of physical activity. Soc Sci Med 54, 17931812.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Giles-Corti, B & Donovan, RJ (2003) Relative influences of individual, social environmental, and physical environmental correlates of walking. Am J Public Health 93, 15831589.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Giskes, K, Turrell, G, Patterson, C & Newman, B (2002 a) Socioeconomic differences among Australian adults in consumption of fruit and vegetables and intakes of vitamins A, C and folate. J Hum Nutr Diet 15 375–385 discussion 387390.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giskes, K, Turrell, G, Patterson, C & Newman, B (2002 b) Socio-economic differences in fruit and vegetable consumption among Australian adolescents and adults. Public Health Nutr 5, 663669.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Glanz, K & Hoelscher, D (2004) Increasing fruit and vegetable intake by changing environments, policy and pricing: restaurant-based research, strategies, and recommendations. Prev Med 39 Suppl. 2, S88S93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Glanz, K, Sallis, JF, Saelens, BE & Frank, LD (2005) Healthy nutrition environments: concepts and measures. Am J Health Promot 19, 330333.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Higgins, JPT & & Green, S (2005) Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions 4.2.5 (updated May 2005). http://www.cochrane.org/resources/handbook/hbook.htm (accessed 26 October 2005).Google Scholar
Hill, JO, Wyatt, HR, Reed, GW & Peters, JC (2003) Obesity and the environment: where do we go from here? Science 299, 853855.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hovell, MF, Wahlgren, DR & Gehrman, CA (2002) The behavioral ecological model Emerging Theories in Health Promotion Practice and Research. Strategies for Improving Public Health, 347385 [DiClemente, RJ, Crosby, RA and Kegler, MC, editors]. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Google Scholar
Humpel, N, Owen, N & Leslie, E (2002) Environmental factors associated with adults' participation in physical activity: a review. Am J Prev Med 22, 188199.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Johannson, L & Andersen, L (1998) Who eats 5 a day?: intake of fruits and vegetables among Norwegians in relation to gender and lifestyle. J Am Diet Assoc 98, 689691.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johansson, L, Thelle, DS, Solvoll, K, Bjorneboe, GE & Drevon, CA (1999) Healthy dietary habits in relation to social determinants and lifestyle factors. Br J Nutr 81, 211220.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kamphuis, CBM, van Lenthe, FJ, Giskes, K, Brug, J & Mackenbach, JP (2006) Perceived environmental determinants of physical activity and fruit and vegetable consumption among low and high socioeconomic groups in the Netherlands. Health Place (Epublication ahead of print version).Google ScholarPubMed
Kintner, M, Boss, P & Johnson, P (1981) The relationship between dysfunctional family environments and family member food intake. J Marriage Fam 43, 633641.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krebs-Smith, SM, Heimendinger, J, Patterson, BH, Subar, AF, Kessler, R & Pivonka, E (1995) Psychosocial factors associated with fruit and vegetable consumption. Am J Health Promot 10, 98104.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Krebs-Smith, SM & Kantor, LS (2001) Choose a variety of fruits and vegetables daily: understanding the complexities. J Nutr 131 487S – 501SCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Laaksonen, M, Prattala, R, Helasoja, V, Uutela, A & Lahelma, E (2003) Income and health behaviours. Evidence from monitoring surveys among Finnish adults. J Epidemiol Community Health 57, 711717.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McAuley, L, Pham, B, Tugwell, P & Moher, D (2000) Does the inclusion of grey literature influence estimates of intervention effectiveness reported in meta-analyses? Lancet 356, 12281231.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McCullough, ML, Feskanich, D, Stampfer, MJ, Giovannucci, EL, Rimm, EB, Hu, FB, Spiegelman, D, Hunter, DJ, Colditz, GA & Willett, WC (2002) Diet quality and major chronic disease risk in men and women: moving toward improved dietary guidance. Am J Clin Nutr 76, 12611271.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mooney, C (1990) Cost and availability of healthy food choices in a London health district. J Hum Nutr Diet 3, 111120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morland, K, Wing, S & Diez Roux, A (2002) The contextual effect of the local food environment on residents' diets: the atherosclerosis risk in communities study. Am J Public Health 92, 17611767.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Murray, CJ & Lopez, AD (1997) Mortality by cause for eight regions of the world: Global Burden of Disease Study. Lancet 349, 12691276.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Naska, A, Vasdekis, VG & Trichopoulou, A, et al. (2000) Fruit and vegetable availability among ten European countries: how does it compare with the ‘five-a-day’ recommendation? DAFNE I and II projects of the European Commission. Br J Nutr 84, 549556.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ness, AR & Powles, JW (1997) Fruit and vegetables, and cardiovascular disease: a review. Int J Epidemiol 26, 113.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nestle, M, Wing, R, Birch, L, DiSogra, L, Drewnowski, A, Middleton, S, Sigman-Grant, M, Sobal, J, Winston, M & Economos, C (1998) Behavioral and social influences on food choice. Nutr Rev 56 S50–S64 discussion S64-S74.Google ScholarPubMed
Pan, Y, Dixon, Z, Humburg, S & Huffman, F (1999) Asian students change their eating patterns after living in the United States. J Am Diet Assoc 99, 5457.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Papadaki, A & Scott, JA (2002) The impact on eating habits of temporary translocation from a Mediterranean to a Northern European environment. Eur J Clin Nutr 56, 455461.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pollard, J, Greenwood, D, Kirk, S & Cade, J (2001) Lifestyle factors affecting fruit and vegetable consumption in the UK Women's Cohort Study. Appetite 37, 7179.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pollard, J, Kirk, SFL & Cade, JE (2002) Factors affecting food choice in relation to fruit and vegetable intake: a review. Nutr Res Rev 15, 373387.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Popkin, BM, Duffey, K & Gordon-Larsen, P (2005) Environmental influences on food choice, physical activity and energy balance. Physiol Behav 86, 603613.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sallis, JF & Owen, N (2002) Ecological models of health behaviour.In Health behaviour and Health Education. Theory, Research and Practice, 462484 [Glanz, K,Lewis, FM and Rimer, BK, editor]. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Google Scholar
Satia, JA, Kristal, AR, Patterson, RE, Neuhouser, ML & Trudeau, E (2002) Psychosocial factors and dietary habits associated with vegetable consumption. Nutrition 18, 247254.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shohaimi, S, Welch, A, Bingham, S, Luben, R, Day, N, Wareham, N & Khaw, KT (2004) Residential area deprivation predicts fruit and vegetable consumption independently of individual educational level and occupational social class: a cross sectional population study in the Norfolk cohort of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer (EPIC-Norfolk). J Epidemiol Community Health 58, 686691.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sooman, A, Macintyre, S & Anderson, A (1993) Scotland's health – a more difficult challenge for some? The price and availability of healthy foods in socially contrasting localities in the west of Scotland. Health Bull (Edinb) 51, 276284.Google Scholar
Steinmetz, KA & Potter, JD (1996) Vegetables, fruit, and cancer prevention: a review. J Am Diet Assoc 96, 10271039.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Steptoe, A, Perkins Porras, L, Rink, E, Hilton, S & Cappuccio, FP (2004) Psychological and social predictors of changes in fruit and vegetable consumption over 12 months following behavioral and nutrition education counseling. Health Psychol 23, 574581.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stokols, D, Grzywacz, JG, McMahan, S & Phillips, K (2003) Increasing the health promotive capacity of human environments. Am J Health Promot 18, 413.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Subar, AF, Frey, CM, Harlan, LC & Kahle, L (1994) Differences in reported food frequency by season of questionnaire administration: the 1987 National Health Interview Survey. Epidemiology 5, 226233.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Swinburn, B, Egger, G & Raza, F (1999) Dissecting obesogenic environments: the development and application of a framework for identifying and prioritizing environmental interventions for obesity. Prev Med 29, 563570.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tabachnick, BG & Fidel, LS (2001) Using Multivariate Statistics, 4th ed. New York: Allyn & Bacon.Google Scholar
Tingay, RS, Tan, CJ, Tan, NC, Tang, S, Teoh, PF, Wong, R & Gulliford, MC (2003) Food insecurity and low income in an English inner city. J Public Health Med 25, 156159.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Duyn, MA, Kristal, AR, Dodd, K, Campbell, MK, Subar, AF, Stables, G, Nebeling, L & Glanz, K (2001) Association of awareness, intrapersonal and interpersonal factors, and stage of dietary change with fruit and vegetable consumption: a national survey. Am J Health Promot 16, 6978.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Van Duyn, MA & Pivonka, E (2000) Overview of the health benefits of fruit and vegetable consumption for the dietetics professional: selected literature. J Am Diet Assoc 100, 15111521.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
van Lenthe, FJ, Brug, J & Mackenbach, JP (2005) Neighbourhood inequalities in physical inactivity: the role of neighbourhood attractiveness, proximity to local facilities and safety in the Netherlands. Soc Sci Med 60, 763775.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Van Staveren, W, Deurenburg, P, Burema, J, de Groot, L & Hautvast, J (1986) Seasonal variation in food intake, pattern of physical activity and change in body weight in a group of young adult Dutch women consuming self-selected diets. Int J Obes 10, 133145.Google Scholar
Wandel, M (1995) Dietary intake of fruits and vegetables in Norway: influence of life phase and socio-economic factors. Int J Food Sci Nutr 46, 291301.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
White, M, Bunting, J, Williams, L, Raybould, S, Adamson, A & Mathers, J (2001) Do ‘Food Deserts’ Exist? A Multi-level, Geographical Analysis of the Relationship Between Retail Food Access, Socio-economic Position and Dietary Intake. Project Report N09010. London: Food Standards Agency.Google Scholar
World, Bank (2005). Accessed 13 July 2005. http://www.worldbank.org/Google Scholar
Ziegler, R, Wilcox, H, Mason, T, Bill, J & Virgo, P (1987) Seasonal variation in intake of carotenoids and vegetables and fruits among white men in New Jersey. Am J Clin Nutr 45, 107114.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed