Bridging the Gap in Studies on the Food Environment: The State-of-the-Art in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs): 2nd Edition
A special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 August 2026 | Viewed by 18
Special Issue Editors
Interests: nutritional epidemiology; urban health; food environment; food consumption
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: nutrition; noncommunicable diseases; nutritional epidemiology and food environment
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: maternal and child health; health promotion and prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases and conditions; nutritional epidemiology and food environment
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
After editing the first Special Issue of “Bridging the Gap in Studies on the Food Environment: The State-of-the-Art in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs)”, we decided to organize a second edition, as we firmly believe that this topic merits further exploration.
Food systems can impact the health of populations in different ways, and they have been identified as one of the drivers of the global syndemic of undernutrition, obesity, and climate change. One of the components of food systems is the food environment, defined as the physical, economic, political, and socio-cultural context through which individuals interact with the food system to make choices about food, including how to acquire, store, prepare, distribute, and consume food. Knowledge and understanding of food environments are essential for informing public policies and interventions that modify food environments, influence food choices, and consequently reduce malnutrition in all its forms and the nutrition-related disease burden. However, research on this theme is most often conducted in high-income countries; for this reason, food environments must be characterized in different settings, such as low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Papers addressing the research of food environment and health in LMICs are invited for this Special Issue, especially those that focus on specific realities and that address gaps identified in the food environment literature, such as the use of valid and reliable instruments to collect primary data; longitudinal, intervention, and qualitative studies; representative samples; adopting conceptual models to formulate questions; evaluation of informal markets; evaluation of different dimensions of food environment; interconnection between different food environments; interconnection between digital and physical environment; inclusion of the sustainability dimension; among others.
Dr. Mariana Carvalho de Menezes
Dr. Larissa Loures Mendes
Dr. Ariene Silva do Carmo
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- food environment
- nutrition environment
- low- and middle-income countries
- food system
- food stores
- food retail
- environmental health
- community food environment
- organizational food environment
- consumer food environment
- information food environment
- home food environment
- digital food environment
- built environment
- social environment
- food swamp
- food desert
- food labeling
- food promotion
- food price
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