Food Environment Atlas
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Food environment factors—such as store/restaurant proximity, food prices, food and nutrition assistance programs, and community characteristics—interact to influence food choices and diet quality. These interactions are complex and more research is needed to identify causal relationships and effective policy interventions.
The objectives of the Food Environment Atlas are:
- to assemble statistics on food environment indicators to stimulate research on the determinants of food choices and diet quality, and
- to provide a spatial overview of a community's ability to access healthy food and its success in doing so.
Data Training Webinar: ERS agricultural economist Alana Rhone provides an overview of the Food Access Research Atlas and Food Environment Atlas as well as a tutorial on how to find and use the data in this ERS Data Training Webinar.
Errata: On September 10, 2020, the Food Environment Atlas data files were reposted after duplicate county records were removed from the Local category. The two counties with duplicate records were Chester, PA (FIPS code = 42029) and Mecklenburg, NC (FIPS code = 37119).
No other values were affected.