Food environments
Global Centre for Preventive Health and NutritionFood environments are dominated by unhealthy foods that are readily available and heavily promoted. These environments are a major driver of unhealthy population diets and high levels of obesity that are among the biggest contributors to poor health. Our research focuses on policies and practices that can lead to healthier food environments.
Food environments are shaped by both commercial priorities and government policy. Our research targets both, with the aim of using research evidence to encourage healthier and more environmentally sustainable food environments. Key programs of work include:
- monitoring and benchmarking the healthiness of food environments
- understanding the policies and processes that shape food environments
- using research evidence to inform and improve the public policy response to unhealthy diets
- ensuring that governments and food companies are accountable for their policies and practices
- implementing and evaluating interventions in retail settings to encourage healthy eating.
We are committed to ensuring that our research findings are communicated widely and are used to inform policy and practice. We regularly contribute to World Health Organization (WHO) reports and consultations on obesity prevention. We also partner closely with the Food For Health Alliance and other public health organisations.
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Australia’s Food Environment Dashboard
The first of its kind, Australia’s Food Environment Dashboard gathers the best-available and most up-to-date data to describe the healthiness of Australia’s food environments. The dashboard covers the key aspects of food environments, including data on food composition, food labelling, food prices and affordability, food promotion, food retail, and government and food company policies.
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RE-FRESH: Next Generation – Centre of Research Excellence in Food Retail Environments for Health: Next Generation
GLOBE is the home of RE-FRESH: Next Generation — the Centre of Research Excellence in Food Retail Environments for Health: Next Generation. The centre is funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (2024-2029) and builds upon research conducted by the NHMRC-funded Centre of Research Excellence in Food Retail Environments for Health (RE-FRESH, 2018-2023) – the first centre globally dedicated to the advancement of healthy food retail research and practice.
RE-FRESH: Next Generation is working to improve diet and health at a population level by developing and translating the evidence needed to improve the retail food environments where people buy their food and drinks via three mechanisms: research to support government policy, accountability mechanisms, and support for retailer to scale-up and sustain initiatives.
The centre is a collaboration of more than 60 researchers based in Australia and internationally, including experts in nutrition, food retail, health economics, public health, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, health policy, epidemiology, health law, biostatistics, equity, co-creation, implementation science and knowledge translation.
Institutions represented include Deakin University, The George Institute for Global Health, The University of Queensland, Monash University, the University of Auckland, Amsterdam UMC, The University of Western Australia, the University of New South Wales (Sydney), Food for Health Alliance (formerly the Obesity Policy Coalition) and The Australian Prevention Partnership Centre.
Visit the Healthy Food Retail website.
Follow RE-FRESH: Next Generation on LinkedIn.
Join RE-FRESH: Next Generation’s mailing list.
Contact re-fresh@deakin.edu.au
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Reports
Healthy eating in the west
National survey on local government provision of healthy food and drink in sport and recreation facilities and obesity prevention policies and actions, April 2021