The Impact of the Food Environment on Diet and Health

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce a Special Issue of Nutrients focused on “The Impact of the Food Environment on Diet and Health”. This Special Issue invites contributions that examine food environments across a wide range of global contexts, including urban and rural settings in high-, middle-, and low-income countries, and their influence on food choice, dietary behaviors, dietary intake, and health.

We are particularly interested in studies that consider physical, economic, sociocultural, and other conditions that can affect food choices, including food availability and accessibility. In addition, we welcome research that explores the role of digital food environments, the workplace, and community-level settings, aimed at improving dietary behaviors and public health.

Submissions that draw on theoretical models, propose or evaluate innovative interventions, explore differences in dietary behaviors according to food environments, or explore methodological tools to understand how the food environment shapes diet and health are welcome.

Some of the topics we hope to feature include the following:

• Food deserts, food swamps, and food oases in determining diet and health;
• Built food environments, including formal and informal retail, and natural food environments, such as wild and cultivated food environments;
• Research methodologies and measures to examine the food environment;
• Exploring the role in which physical contexts and social, cultural, and sustainability factors influence food choice;
• How the salience, structure, and variety of food assortments can affect food choice, dietary intake, and health;
• Evaluation of community-based or household-level programs promoting healthier food environments;
• Modeling the public health impacts of environment interventions in food systems;
• Inequities in food environments and their contribution to health disparities;
• The effects of urbanization and globalization on local food availability and diet;
• Case studies of food environment interventions in schools, workplaces, or other institutions;
• Examining the impact of terroir — including soil, climate, agricultural practices, and local know-how — on the sensory identity, accessibility, and valuation of foods, as well as its implications for dietary behavior/diet quality;
• Exploring barriers and facilitators to improve dietary behaviors in challenging food environments, including food and nutritional literacy level;
• Exploring the characterization and modulation of obesogenic and salinogenic environments to enhance dietary intake and health among populations and communities.

We look forward to your submissions and to building a strong collection of studies that helps to deepen our understanding of how transforming food environments can lead to healthier lives.

Dr. Carla Gonçalves
Prof. Dr. Pedro Moreira
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Nutrients is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• diet quality
• food environment
• community food environment
• food heritage/culture
• food choice
• food access
• food system
• food deserts food swamps food oases
• food and nutritional literacy monitoring
• health outcomes public health
• research methodologies and measures
• food provision
• food retail
• organizational food environment
• occupational health
• vending machines
• workplace
• digital food environment