Geographic and socioeconomic distribution of food vendors: a case study of a municipality in the Southern Brazil

Abstract

The objective of this study was to identify the food vendor distribution profile of the city of Florianópolis, Santa Catarina State, Brazil, and investigate its association with the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of different municipal regions. This descriptive, cross-sectional study obtained the location of food vendors from secondary data from different institutional sources. The density of different types of food vendors per 1,000 inhabitants in each municipal weighted area was calculated. The Kruskal-Wallis test compared the mean density of food vendors and the weighted income areas. The lowest-income regions had the lowest density of butchers, snack bars, supermarkets, bakeries/pastry shops, natural product stores, juice bars, and convenience stores. The identification of these areas may encourage the creation of public policies that facilitate healthy food startups and/or maintenance of healthy food vendors, especially in the lowest-income regions.