Food Environment Typology: Advancing an Expanded Definition, Framework, and Methodological Approach for Improved Characterization of Wild, Cultivated, and Built Food Environments toward Sustainable Diets

Summary

This paper expands conceptual and methodological approaches to characterising food environments by integrating sustainability dimensions alongside traditional food environment properties. Using a socio-ecological framework, the authors develop a typology of wild, cultivated, and built food environments accessible across low-, middle-, and high-income countries, and propose a toolbox of measurement approaches for evaluating interventions aimed at supporting sustainable diets. The work bridges food systems, public health nutrition, and environmental sustainability by positioning food environments as critical intervention points for addressing obesity, undernutrition, and climate change.

UK applicability

The framework's typology of wild and cultivated food environments may have limited direct application to highly urbanised UK contexts where built food environments predominate, though the measurement methodologies and sustainability characterisation approach could inform UK food policy and environmental health assessments. The paper's integration of sustainability properties into food environment measurement aligns with UK policy directions on sustainable food systems and public health nutrition.

Key measures

Typological characterisation of food environments; measurement framework for availability, affordability, convenience, promotion, quality, and sustainability properties of foods and beverages

Outcomes reported

The study developed an expanded definition of food environments encompassing wild, cultivated, and built environments with sustainability properties integrated. It provided a typology characterising food environment types across income levels and identified objective and subjective measurement tools for assessing availability, affordability, convenience, promotion, quality, and sustainability properties.

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