Assessment of Food Environment and Physical Activity Opportunities in Three Neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires City

Several environmental factors have contributed to the growing pandemic of obesity. It has been described that some characteristics of food and built environment have an influence on patterns of food consumption and physical activity of people in a certain place.

We have designed a cross-sectional study to describe some aspects of the food environment (community and consumer) and the frequency, distribution and characteristics of the space available to perform physical activity in three neighborhoods of Buenos Aires city.

Three neighborhoods of Buenos Aires (with representativity), from different socioeconomic strata, will be selected by convenience to conduct this study.

The study will consist on three stages: first, the generation of the sampling frame of food stores, public and private spaces available for carrying out physical activity, and the development of a tool designed to evaluate the availability of healthy foods in supermarkets and grocery stores. Finally, a sample of those stores will be randomly selected for assessing the availability of selected foods.

In Argentina, the knowledge of the food environment is limited. We believe that the information obtained in this study will contribute to a better understanding of the subject.