Details

Purpose This symposium will explore using big data to characterise the out-of-home food environment.

Rationale The out-of-home food environment shapes our dietary behaviour and health outcomes. Given the changing food retail landscape, it is important to understand and monitor the out-of-home environment. Traditional methods of characterising the out-of-home food environment, such as outlet audit instruments, require field visits and so are difficult to employ on a large geographical scale. With the digital transformation, the out-of-home food environment now extends beyond the geographical boundaries of traditional brick-and-mortar outlets. The generation of publicly available big data sources provides a new solution to characterising different dimensions of the out-of-home food environment. By maximising efficiency, using publicly available big data allows real-time monitoring of the out-of-home food environment and provides the depth and breadth of information needed for advancing food environment research in the digital era.

Objectives The symposium aims to:

1.       Present innovative approaches that have recently been employed to understand and monitor the out-of-home food environment.

2.       Advance audience understanding beyond traditional approaches of assessing different dimensions of the out-of-home food environment with fieldwork to automated approaches that may facilitate the characterisation of consumer nutrition environment.

3.       Stimulate discussion about future research directions regarding using big data sources to further food environment research.

Summary The session will comprise three speakers currently based in the US, UK, and Australia, each presenting their recent work on the out-of-home food environment using big data sources (15 mins each). The Chair will first introduce the session (5 mins) and moderate the Q&A session (20 mins) after the presentations, leaving 5 mins for brief changeovers.

Format

Chairperson (Jean Adams) introduces the session and speakers.

Speaker 1: Xiang Chen, University of Connecticut, United States: Nutrition assessment of restaurants using consumer-generated food images

Speaker 2: Yuru Huang, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom: Characterising healthiness of out-of-home food outlets in Great Britain using online menus

Speaker 3: Sisi Jia, University of Sydney, Australia: Monitoring the healthiness and accessibility of food outlets across Australia on the leading meal delivery application: Initial results from the DIGIFOOD Dashboard Study

Q&A: Open floor discussion between the audience and presenters, moderated by the Chair.

Interaction: Online questions will be monitored and asked by the Chair in the Q&A. The online audience will also have the opportunity to interact with the speakers during the Q&A session.

Speaker