We hypothesized that individuals with reduced cognitive bandwidth, operationalized as low perceived self-control and greater financial stress, are more vulnerable to unhealthy temptations in the food environment. We observed that associations between the food environment and body weight were stronger in those experiencing low self-control or great financial strain, but the direction of these associations was unexpected; that is, the density of fast food outlets and the totality of food outlets in the local neighbourhood were negatively related to body mass index and odds of being overweight and obese, and particularly among those with low levels of self-control and greater financial strain.
In the main analysis, every additional fast food outlet per squared kilometre was associated with a 0.04-point lower BMI. For a person of 1.80 m and 80 kg, this translates to 0.13 kg less body weight. Associations with overweight and obesity were in the same direction and with similar small effect sizes but did not reach statistical significance. It is puzzling that, regardless the size of the local area considered, a higher availability of fast food outlets was associated with lower body weight. Similar but smaller associations were observed when analysing the totality of food outlets. This may suggest that the totality of food outlets reflects opportunities for buying healthier and unhealthier foods, more so than representing an overabundance of food outlets.
Our study is not the first to find unexpected results between the fast food environment and indicators of body weight: systematic reviews describe conflicting results in the literature [
39,
40,
41,
42]. The expected mechanism of this association is through dietary behaviour. Even though we did not have such data available for the present study, unexpected results in previous literature and in the current study are not likely to be attributable to the lack of these data: fast food is typically nutrient-poor, calorie-dense and high in fat, sugar and salt, and consumption at fast food restaurants is associated with higher energy intake and greater obesity risk [
43,
44]. The inconsistencies could thus be attributable to misclassification in the exposure variables: the missing link between the availability of fast food outlets and use of these outlets. A recent European study demonstrated that while access to fast food outlets in the home neighbourhood was not directly linked to fast food consumption or obesity, access to fast food outlets was associated with perceived availability and use of fast food outlets, and this was in turn associated with greater reported fast food consumption and unhealthier weight status [
45]. In addition, a recent study demonstrated that exposure to food outlets in the residential neighbourhood was not representative of the overall foodscape exposure [
46], and another study showed that the work and commuting environment also contribute substantially to the exposure to food outlets [
47]. As such, the density of food outlets in the residential neighbourhood may not reflect the total exposure to food outlets individuals encounter in their daily lives. Studies using global positioning systems (GPS) may provide insight into what fast food outlets individuals are exposed to, and which of these outlets they visit [
48]. In addition, it could be speculated that a higher density of food outlets in the residential neighbourhood is just a reflection of greater ‘land use mix’ (i.e., an area with multiple types of destinations, including food retailers), which previously has been linked to walking and lower rates of obesity [
49,
50]. We hypothesized that the food environment would be associated with higher body weight via dietary behaviour (energy intake) but did not investigate associations with energy expenditure: it may be that having more food outlets within a walkable and cyclable distance is in fact associated with more physical activity.
A previous study in the same cohort showed that low self-control and high financial strain are linked to unhealthier lifestyle behaviours and increased body weight [
32], and we found evidence for an interaction between these social cognitive factors and the food environment. It is uncertain whether the influence of the food environment on obesity is always stronger in those with low self-control and high financial strain (i.e., would similar moderating effects be present had we observed a positive food environment–body weight association?), or whether this moderation is limited to the negative food environment–body weight association as observed in the present study. Future studies, preferably with more precise data on what temptations in the food environment individuals are actually exposed to, should investigate whether experiencing low self-control and great financial strain take up cognitive bandwidth that could otherwise be used to resist unhealthy temptations in the food environment, as proposed by the scarcity theory [
17,
23].
Strengths and Limitations
This is the first study to investigate the potential moderating role of reduced cognitive bandwidth on the association between the local food environment and body weight. Although the study design (using questionnaires) will have excluded participants with low literacy and low mastery of the Dutch language, our sample was representative of the source population (residents of Eindhoven and surroundings aged 25–75 years) in terms of health-related behaviours [
33]. Another strength is the linkage of two objective measures of exposure to the food environment with weight status. However, the results of this study should be interpreted in the light of its limitations. First, we used self-reported height and weight, and reporting bias by those with short height or high weight may have resulted in an underestimation of BMI and a potential misclassification of weight status [
51]. This may have attenuated the associations under study. Second, exposure misclassification may have arisen because our measures of the food environment may not accurately reflect where participants bought food and where they experienced temptation to buy unhealthy food. We accounted for exposure misclassification due to area definitions by using different ego-centred buffers, but the density of fast food outlets and the totality of food outlets in the residential neighbourhood may not have captured the obesogenic aspects of the food environment well enough. Third, residual confounding in food environment research has been shown to result in null or weak findings [
52], and this may be applicable in this study as well. Fourth, our study was unable to capture the complex system of interacting factors of influence on obesity [
2], despite our investigation of the interaction between two environmental-level and two individual-level factors. This limitation includes the cross-sectional design, which restricted our opportunities of disentangling selection, causation and time-lag effects of food environments on body weight, and the lack of data on the hypothesized mediating variable dietary intake.