Search Results (253)

Compared to commuting, grocery shopping trips, despite their profound implications for mixed land use and transportation planning, have received limited attention in travel behavior research. Drawing upon a travel diary survey conducted in a fast-growing metropolitan region of the United States, i.e., Salt Lake County, UT, this research investigated a variety of influential factors affecting mode choices associated with grocery shopping. We analyze how built environment (BE) characteristics, measured at seven spatial scales or different ways of aggregating spatial data—including straight-line buffers, network buffers, and census units—affect travel mode decisions. Key predictors of choosing walking, biking, or transit over driving include age, household size, vehicle ownership, income, land use mix, street density, and distance to the central business district (CBD). Notably, the influence of BE factors on mode choice is sensitive to different spatial aggregation methods and locations of origins and destinations. The straight-line buffer was a good indicator for the influence of store sales amount on mode choices; the network buffer was more suitable for the household built environment factors, whereas the measurement at the census block and block group levels was more effective for store-area characteristics. These findings underscore the importance of considering both the spatial analysis method and the location (home vs. store) when modeling non-work travel. A multi-scalar approach can enhance the accuracy of travel demand models and inform more effective land use and transportation planning strategies. Full article

Objective: To explore the relationship between type of grocery store used (chain vs. independent), transportation access, food insecurity, and fruit and vegetable intake in Detroit, Michigan, USA, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Design: A cross-sectional online survey was conducted from December 2021 to May 2022. Setting: Detroit, Michigan. Participants: 656 Detroit residents aged 18 and older. Results: Bivariate analyses showed that chain grocery store shoppers reported significantly greater fruit and vegetable intake (2.42 vs. 2.14 times/day for independent grocery store shoppers, p < 0.001) and lower rates of food insecurity compared to independent store shoppers (45.9% vs. 65.3% for independent grocery store shoppers, p < 0.001). Fewer independent store shoppers used their own vehicle (52.9% vs. 76.2% for chain store shoppers, p < 0.001). After adjusting for socioeconomic and demographic variables transportation access was strongly associated with increased odds of shopping at chain stores (OR = 1.89, 95% CI [1.21,2.95], p = 0.005) but food insecurity was no longer associated with grocery store type. Shopping at chain grocery stores was associated with higher fruit and vegetable intake after adjusting for covariates (1.18 times more per day, p = 0.042). Qualitative responses highlighted systemic barriers, including poor food quality, high costs, and limited transportation options, exacerbating food access inequities. Conclusions: These disparities underscore the need for targeted interventions to improve transportation options and support food security in vulnerable populations, particularly in urban areas like Detroit. Addressing these structural challenges is essential for reducing food insecurity and promoting equitable access to nutritious foods. Full article

Background: South Asian Americans (SAA) are one of the fastest-growing immigrant groups in the U.S. and face significant health disparities, particularly regarding chronic diseases like diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease. Dietary patterns play a crucial role in these disparities, with acculturation to Western diets linked to poorer health outcomes. Despite this, the impact of food insecurity on dietary habits among SAAs remains underexplored. This study aims to examine the availability, cost, and quality of ethnic food items and how food insecurity influences dietary practices in Southern California’s SAA population. Methods: The study was conducted in San Bernardino County, California, with field data collection focused on five South Asian ethnicity-specific grocery stores and three Western grocery stores. We assessed the availability and cost of key ingredients for commonly prepared SAA dishes. Additionally, focus group interviews were held with South Asian immigrants to understand food insecurity challenges and dietary adaptations. Results: The study found significant disparities in food availability and cost between SAA-ethnic grocery stores and Western stores. SAA stores were less accessible and more widely dispersed, with an average distance of 10 miles between them. While ingredients like ginger paste and cumin powder were available in both types of stores, items such as ghee, fenugreek seeds, and black gram were harder to find in Western stores. Focus group participants noted that ethnic foods, especially vegetarian ingredients, were more expensive than Western alternatives, leading many to substitute traditional meals with cheaper, less nutritious options. Participants also raised concerns about the poor quality of items in ethnic stores, such as expired produce, which further limited their food choices. Conclusions: Food insecurity, driven by limited availability, high cost, and poor quality of ethnic foods, poses significant challenges to the SAA community’s diet and health. Addressing these barriers could improve food security and health outcomes among SAA immigrants. Full article

A lack of access to healthy food has been a problem for low-income residents in many developed urban areas. Due to travel time and additional transportation costs, these residents often opt for unhealthy food rather than nutritious alternatives. This study examines the spatial distribution of food deserts in Mississauga—one of Canada’s most populous cities and a city with one of the highest diabetes rates in the Province of Ontario. Network analysis was employed to map the geographic inaccessibility to essential nutritious food, defined as residential areas that are beyond a 15-min walking distance from grocery stores. Socioeconomic indicators were integrated to identify and compare the regions that are socioeconomically disadvantaged and, therefore, most affected by food inaccessibility. The results reveal the presence of several food deserts spatially dispersed in Mississauga. The implications of these findings are discussed, with a focus on the relationship between food desert locations and the socioeconomic conditions of the affected residents. This study provides a practical, replicable approach for identifying food deserts that can be easily applied in other regions. The model developed offers valuable tools for policymakers and urban planners to address food desert issues, improving access to healthy food and positively impacting the health and well-being of affected populations. Full article

Carsharing has long supported trip purposes typically made by private vehicles, with grocery shopping especially benefiting from the carrying capacity of a personal vehicle. BlueLA is a one-way, station-based electric vehicle (EV) carsharing service in Los Angeles aimed at improving access in low-income neighborhoods. We hypothesize that BlueLA improves grocery access for underserved households by increasing their spatial-temporal reach to diverse grocery store types. We test two hypotheses: (1) accessibility from BlueLA stations to grocery stores varies by store type, traffic conditions, and departure times; and (2) Standard (general population) and Community (low-income) members differ in perceived grocery access and station usage. Using a mixed-methods approach, we integrate walking and driving isochrones, store data (n = 5888), trip activity data (n = 59,112), and survey responses (n = 215). Grocery shopping was a key trip purpose, with 69% of Community and 61% of Standard members reporting this use. Late-night grocery access is mostly limited to convenience stores, while roundtrips to full-service stores range from 55 to 100 min and cost USD 12 to USD 20. Survey data show that 84% of Community and 71% of Standard members reported improved grocery access. The findings highlight the importance of trip timing and the potential for carsharing and retail strategies to improve food access. Full article

The concept ‘mobility of care’ captures all the daily travel necessary for the upkeep of a household, including trips to grocery stores, health-related appointments, errands, and caring activities for dependents. Since it was originally coined in 2009, a handful of studies have shown how poorly mobility of care trips are captured in transportation surveys. These preliminary analyses also find that care trips comprise a substantial proportion of daily mobility. As women disproportionately engage in ‘mobility of care’ travel, the under-consideration of care trips is argued to result in a gender bias in transport planning. Despite this, transport policy related to mobility of care has received less attention. Given that transport policy shapes how transport systems operate, this paper explores the extent to which recent transport policies consider mobility of care. A critical policy review framework is used to systematically examine seven policy documents (435 pages) from the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC), the largest transit agency in Canada. Results indicate that mobility of care is rarely directly considered or significantly discussed. Instead, transport policy often uses the commute to work as the default trip. Mentions of care destinations and trip characteristics associated with mobility of care are more common in recent years and most frequently discussed in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic or specialized services for seniors and people with disabilities. Policies that likely facilitate mobility of care indirectly are also identified, including fare discounts, transfer windows, and accessibility policies. The review concludes with preliminary recommendations on how transit agencies can more directly plan for mobility of care. Full article

This study proposes a shopping assistant robot, called CartBot, to facilitate the grocery shopping experience for customers/shoppers. A grocery store environment can be complex and confusing to customers. Therefore, the main aim is to assist customers in navigating this environment efficiently while carrying their purchased items, and hence improve the overall shopping experience and reduce shopping time. To achieve this, a unified framework for implementing path planning and collision avoidance in a supermarket environment is proposed. Here, with a shopping list as the input, an efficient (or near-optimal) global path is generated to complete the shopping. Then, a real-time local planner is proposed to navigate this path while avoiding any obstacles that are encountered. Various features/strategies to facilitate navigation and obstacle interactions are also addressed in this work. Simulation studies of CartBot are carried out in a grocery store environment along with other CartBots, employees, and human shoppers to validate the performance of the proposed approach. Full article

Dietitian-led grocery store tours (GSTs) educate consumers about nutrition. Virtual GSTs could increase access to nutrition education. A feasibility study was conducted to determine participant acceptability and their physiological responses to a virtual GST using immersive virtual reality (IVR), a desktop monitor (PC), or a tablet. Participants were asked to report to the laboratory on three occasions to view a virtual GST. Physiological measurements were collected, and participants completed questionnaires about their feelings of presence, nausea, mood, and enjoyment during the virtual GST. Participants experienced a greater sense of presence (IVR = 5.8, PC = 2.6, tablet = 2.6; p < 0.05) with a greater feeling of nausea (IVR = 1.7, PC = 0.4, tablet = 0.4; p < 0.05) in the IVR treatment. Participants enjoyed the IVR GST more than the tablet GST (IVR = 5.3, PC = 4.6, tablet = 4.1; p < 0.05). There were marginal effects of treatment on heart rate (p < 0.05) but not on other physiological measures. There were no differences in the participants’ willingness to recommend a virtual GST given the use of different technologies to a friend or in the participants’ reported mood. Virtual GSTs, using different technologies, may be a feasible approach to provide nutrition education Full article

Background: Equally with other indigenous green leafy vegetables, Solunum nigrum L. has been widely consumed by the VhaVenda tribe found in the Limpopo Province of South Africa since ancient times as a source of food diversification due to its higher-quality nutritional value, sustainability, food security, and medicinal benefits. It is mostly cultivated from seeds in seedling trays and transplanted in the open field, and at the maturity stage, marketing and distribution are mainly conducting through informal markets (i.e., street vendors). However, recently, it can be found in selected supermarkets and commercial grocery stores in South Africa. The leaves and young shoots of S. nigrum are cooked solely and/or as a supplementary vegetable with Brassica rapa L. subsp. chinensis (Chinese cabbage), Spinacia oleracea L. (spinach), Amaranthus graecizans L. (green amaranth), Solanum lycopersicum L. (tomato), and/or cooking oil for flavor. Objective: Contrary to other green leafy vegetables, few studies have been conducted on the metabolites released by S. nigrum and the influence of growing conditions on the metabolites thereof. Method: A ¹H-nuclear magnetic resonance tool was used to identify the untargeted metabolites released by S. nigrum, and spectra were phase-corrected and binned with MestReNova and statistically analyzed with SIMCA 18.0.2. Results: The findings showed that a total of 12 metabolites were detected between the growing conditions. Eleven similar metabolites, such as glycocholate, chlorogenate (human health benefits), caffeine for its bitter taste, choline, 3-Chlorotyrosine (antidiabetic, blood pressure), etc., and a few vital soluble sugars, were detected in S. nigrum samples grown in the open field and greenhouse-cultivated. Glucose was exclusively detected in the S. nigrum grown under greenhouse conditions. Full article

Amidst a period of sustained inflation and rising living costs, food insecurity is a growing concern in Australia and is correlated with poor diet quality and increased rates of non-communicable diseases. Currently there is a gap in knowledge of the impact of increasing cost-of-living pressures on the affordability of a healthy diet. As affordability plays a key role in food security, this cross-sectional study aimed to examine the costs, affordability, and differential of habitual (unhealthy) and recommended (healthy) diets within the Illawarra region of Australia and compare results to 2022 findings. The Healthy Diets Australian Standardised Affordability and Pricing tool was applied in six locations in the Illawarra, with two randomly selected each from a low, moderate, and high socioeconomically disadvantaged area. Costs were determined for three reference households: a family of four, a single parent family, and a single male. Affordability was determined for the reference households at three levels of income: median gross, minimum-wage, and welfare dependent. Data was compared to data collected in 2022 using the same methods and locations. Recommended diets cost 10.3–36% less than habitual diets depending on household type, but remained unaffordable for welfare dependant households and family households from socioeconomically disadvantaged areas, where diets required 25.5–45.9% of household income. Due to income increases, affordability of both diets has marginally improved since 2022, requiring 0.5–4.8% less household income. This study provides updated evidence that supports the urgent need for policies, interventions, and monitoring to widely assess and improve healthy diet affordability and decrease food insecurity rates. Possible solutions include increasing welfare rates above the poverty line and utilising nudge theory in grocery stores. Full article

Thanks to several components with health-promoting properties, mushrooms are recognized as a practical functional food and a valuable source of nutrients for the food industry. Ergosterol, the major sterol in edible mushrooms and a precursor of vitamin D2 with proven pharmacological activity and nutritional value, has become a very important topic in chemical and medical research. The main objectives of this study were to determine the ergosterol content in different species of Serbian wild mushrooms and in commercial mushrooms from Korean and Serbian grocery stores using square-wave voltammetry, to compare the concentrations in different parts of white button mushrooms, and to determine a possible relationship between Zn, Cu and Fe and ergosterol contents. The ergosterol contents varied between 0.01 and 7.04 mg/g (dry mass) of the mushrooms and were generally higher in cultivated mushrooms than in wild mushrooms. In addition, the ergosterol concentration was higher in the stems than in the caps of the mushrooms examined. Iron, Zn and Cu contents varied between the mushroom species at 8.5–479.9, 13.1–149.7 and 1.62–93.03 mg/kg, respectively, and principal component analysis (PCA) extracted two factors explaining 79.14% of the total variance, suggesting a direct relationship between iron and ergosterol content. This is the first comprehensive study to analyze and evaluate ergosterol concentrations in edible mushrooms from Korea and Serbia. Full article

The ever-expanding market has made organic food a popular research topic, with the primary question being what factors facilitate or hinder consumers in making an organic purchase. The most relevant studies have been conducted in an offline context. As selling organic food online has become a common practice and is underresearched, this study aims to (1) explore the drivers and barriers of online organic food shopping and (2) investigate the shopping behavior of organic food from an omnichannel perspective. The results of partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), with 278 valid samples, indicate that trust in organic labels and positive review sentiment significantly contribute to the intention to purchase organic food online, which in turn influences online purchase behaviors. For online shopping behavior, the investigation shows that Taiwanese consumers, on a monthly basis, make an average of 3.22 organic food purchases and spend US$156.44 through offline channels, whereas they make 2.34 purchases of organic food and spend US$114.71 via online channels. Organic vegetables and fruits are the most frequently purchased organic foods. Among online channels, consumers prefer visiting the websites of general grocery stores and specialty stores over social media platforms. Our findings suggest that the determinants of organic food shopping differ between offline and online contexts and reveal interesting behavioral patterns of online organic shopping. Full article

Background/Objectives: The effectiveness of eco-labels in encouraging more sustainable food choices varies across studies. We investigate whether consumers’ characteristics may explain this heterogeneity in the context of carbon footprint labeling by studying the moderating role of sociodemographic factors (age, gender, ethnicity, occupation), socioeconomic status (education and subjective socioeconomic position), place of residence (rural to urban), and political ideology. Methods: We manipulated the proportion of carbon-labeled products in two incentive-compatible and pre-registered choice experiments. The first (n = 715) asked consumers to shop for instant meal products in an online grocery store containing a food category’s complete product assortment. The second (n = 1233) forced consumers to make tradeoffs between product preferences and carbon emissions in two consecutive food choices for cut fruit products, one without and another with carbon labels. To capture potential lasting effects, we collected purchase intention data from the same respondents several months after the labeling exposure in both studies. Results: Across both studies, increasing the proportion of products with a carbon label led liberals and centrists to choose lower-emission foods but had minimal or no impact on conservatives (although it never backfired). None of the other individual characteristics moderated the effects of labeling after controlling for political ideology. However, a young age, a low subjective socioeconomic position, and an urban residence indirectly improved responsiveness to labeling by predicting a more liberal political ideology. The labeling effects observed for liberals persisted for four months but not longer. Conclusions: These findings demonstrate the critical moderating role of political ideology and provide actionable insights to improve the targeting and design of sustainability interventions. Full article

This study integrates customer loyalty program data with a synthetic population to analyze grocery shopping behaviours in Montreal. Using clustering algorithms, we classify 295,631 loyalty program members into seven distinct consumer segments based on behavioural and sociodemographic attributes. The findings reveal significant heterogeneity in consumer behaviour, emphasizing the impact of urban geography on shopping decisions. This segmentation also provides valuable insights for retailers optimizing store locations and marketing strategies and for policymakers aiming to enhance urban accessibility. Additionally, our approach strengthens agent-based model (ABM) simulations by incorporating demographic and behavioural diversity, leading to more realistic consumer representations. While integrating loyalty data with synthetic populations mitigates privacy concerns, challenges remain regarding data sparsity and demographic inconsistencies. Future research should explore multi-source data integration and advanced clustering methods. Overall, this study contributes to geographically explicit modelling, demonstrating the effectiveness of combining behavioural and synthetic demographic data in urban retail analysis. Full article

Background/Objectives: Weight management is directly linked to cancer recurrence and survival, but unfortunately, nutritional oncology counseling is not typically covered by insurance, creating a disparity for patients without nutritional education and food access. Novel ways of imparting personalized nutrition advice are needed to address this issue. Large language models (LLMs) offer a promising path toward tailoring dietary advice to individual patients. This study aimed to assess the capacity of LLMs to offer personalized dietary advice to patients with breast cancer. Methods: Thirty-one prompt templates were designed to evaluate dietary recommendations generated by ChatGPT and Gemini with variations within eight categorical variables: cancer stage, comorbidity, location, culture, age, dietary guideline, budget, and store. Seven prompts were selected for four board-certified oncology dietitians to also respond to. Responses were evaluated based on nutritional content and qualitative observations. A quantitative comparison of the calories and macronutrients of the LLM- and dietitian-generated meal plans via the Acceptable Macronutrient Distribution Ranges and United States Department of Agriculture’s estimated calorie needs was performed. Conclusions: The LLMs generated personalized grocery lists and meal plans adapting to location, culture, and budget but not age, disease stage, comorbidities, or dietary guidelines. Gemini provided more comprehensive responses, including visuals and specific prices. While the dietitian-generated diets offered more adherent total daily calorie contents to the United States Department of Agriculture’s estimated calorie needs, ChatGPT and Gemini offered more adherent macronutrient ratios to the Acceptable Macronutrient Distribution Range. Overall, the meal plans were not significantly different between the LLMs and dietitians. LLMs can provide personalized dietary advice to cancer patients who may lack access to this care. Grocery lists and meal plans generated by LLMs are applicable to patients with variable food access, socioeconomic means, and cultural preferences and can be a tool to increase health equity. Full article