Smartphone Data Uncovers the Link Between Fast Food Outlets and Diet-Related Diseases – A new study from the University of Southern California (USC) has found that the number of fast-food outlets you come across throughout your day may be a better predictor of your risk of diet-related disease than your self-reported fast-food intake.
The study, which was published in the journal JAMA Network Open, used smartphone mobility data to track the daily trajectories of a representative sample of the LA population. They found that people who visited more fast-food outlets were more likely to be obese and have diabetes.
“This is the first study of its kind to use mobility data to measure people’s exposure to fast-food outlets,” said lead author Abigail Horn, a research assistant professor in the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. “Our findings suggest that mobility data could be a valuable tool for tracking dietary patterns and informing public health interventions.”
The researchers hope that their study will lead to more effective ways to prevent diet-related disease. One possibility is to use mobility data to target interventions to the people who are most at risk.
“For example, we could use mobility data to identify people who live in neighborhoods with a lot of fast-food outlets and target them with education or counseling programs,” Horn said. “We could also use mobility data to track the effectiveness of interventions, to see if they are leading to changes in people’s eating habits.”
The researchers are also interested in using mobility data to study other aspects of the food environment, such as access to healthy food options.
“We hope that our research can help us to better understand the role of the food environment in diet-related disease,” Horn said. “This could lead to new interventions that help people to make healthier choices and improve their overall health.”
In addition to the potential for using mobility data to target interventions and track their effectiveness, the study’s findings also have implications for our understanding of the relationship between the food environment and diet-related disease. The fact that mobility data was a better predictor of people’s risk of diet-related disease than their self-reported fast-food intake suggests that people may not be fully aware of how much fast food they actually eat. This could be due to a number of factors, such as forgetting what they ate or underestimating the amount of food they consumed.
The study’s findings also suggest that the physical environment in which we live can have a significant impact on our health. The fact that people who visited more fast-food outlets were more likely to be obese and have diabetes suggests that living in an environment with a lot of fast-food outlets can make it difficult to make healthy choices.
Overall, the study’s findings are a valuable contribution to our understanding of the relationship between the food environment and diet-related disease. The use of mobility data to track people’s exposure to fast-food outlets is a promising new approach that could lead to more effective interventions to prevent diet-related disease. Source
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