(HealthDay News) — Exposure to ready-to-eat food environments is associated with a higher risk for incident heart failure, according to a study published online Feb. 27 in Circulation: Heart Failure.
Qiaochu Xue, MPH, from the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at Tulane University in New Orleans, and colleagues examined the association between ready-to-eat food environments and incident heart failure at an individual level in a large prospective cohort study. Exposure to ready-to-eat food environments, including pubs or bars, restaurants or cafeterias, and fast-food outlets, was measured as both proximity and density metrics. By summing the densities of three types of food environments, a composite ready-to-eat food environment density score was developed.
The researchers observed associations for closer proximity to and greater density of ready-to-eat food environments, especially pubs and bars and fast-food outlets, with an elevated risk for incident heart failure. The risk for heart failure was 16% higher for participants in the highest density score category versus those with no exposure to composite ready-to-eat food environments. Significant interactions were seen for food environments with education, urbanicity and density of physical activity facilities on heart failure risk; participants who were poorly educated, were living in urban areas, and did not have physical activity facilities had a stronger ready-to-eat food environment-associated risk for heart failure.
“Our findings lend support to the improvement of neighborhood food environments in the prevention of heart failure,” the authors write.
