How can planning promote a healthier food environment to help prevent excess body weight?

The environmental influences of food choice and obesity have an important role that could be more effectively utilised in helping people to achieve and maintain a healthy weight. The planning system is an important factor and lever because it directly influences what can or can’t be allowed and where.

The drivers of obesity exist in the places where we live, work and play, where the food environment and built environment often make it challenging for people to live healthier lives (1). People may find it a challenge to follow a healthy balanced diet, primarily because they are living in an ‘obesogenic’ environment where less healthy options are the default. This, in turn, promotes behaviours that can lead to excess calorie consumption and physical inactivity, which results in weight gain over time (2), (3). For example, there’s a clear relationship between exposure to fast-food outlets, which are more prevalent in areas of deprivation, and diet and body weight (4), (5). Close proximity to fast food is associated with increased intake of fast food, particularly for lower income groups (6), (7), (8), (9), (10). Children are more likely to live with obesity if they’re living in a fast-food dense neighbourhood (11).

Modifying the environment is where planners can have a key role in helping to shape healthy weight behaviours

By improving how people can access everyday food, we can help healthier food become the default choice, improve the quality of life for future generations, and reduce health inequalities driven by the food environment. Addressing this is an important part of taking a whole systems approach to tackling obesity (12).

Creating a healthier living environment and addressing the wider determinants of health will help improve health equity, as well as overall health. As planning decisions influence the design and use of the built environment, research has demonstrated that as part of a package of measures, planning can be used to improve population health and target where actions are needed to address inequalities (12). Given the ways the environment influences food choice, local authority planners have a potentially important role in bringing about change, working together with local authority public health and environmental health officers.