Health Reports, August 2023
Released: 2023-08-16
Greater access to restaurants is not associated with more frequent eating out among children and youth
Having more fast-food or full-service restaurants and cafes close to home was generally not associated with more frequent consumption of food from restaurants nor intake of sugary drinks among Canadian children and youth living in large urban centres. These findings are from the article "The local restaurant environment in relation to eating out and sugary drink intake among Canadian children and youth," released today in Health Reports.
This study was among the first to use the Canadian Food Environment Dataset, a recently developed high-quality dataset of geographic food retail measures based on food outlet data from the 2018 Statistics Canada Business Register.
Childhood and adolescence are key periods for learning and shaping food-related preferences and behaviours that last into adulthood. Access to various types of retail food outlets in communities may influence food choices to some degree. While the current study of 23,776 Canadian children and youth did not find consistent associations between geographic accessibility of local restaurants and consumption of food from local restaurants or sugary drinks, efforts to create environments that foster healthy food choices among young people in the home, schools and communities will remain important.
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The article "The local restaurant environment in relation to eating out and sugary drink intake among Canadian children and youth" is now available in the August 2023 online issue of Health Reports, Vol. 34, No. 8 (82-003-X).
This issue of Health Reports also contains the article "Validating the Children's Intrinsic Needs Satisfaction Scale in the 2019 Canadian Health Survey on Children."
Contact information
For more information, or to enquire about the concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact us (toll-free 1-800-263-1136; 514-283-8300; infostats@statcan.gc.ca) or Media Relations (statcan.mediahotline-ligneinfomedias.statcan@statcan.gc.ca).
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