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 Researchers surveyed more than 1,300 mostly overweight and obese
residents in two poor, primarily African American communities and
found that shoppers who regularly made grocery lists also made
higher quality food choices and had lower body weights.
"We don't know whether people who are healthier pay more attention
to what they eat and pay more attention to their weight and are also
people who do more planning, or if people who do more planning are
more able to avoid impulse purchases and the less healthy options
presented to them at the supermarket," lead study author Tamara
Dubowitz said.
"We can say there is a link but we can't say what causes it,"
Dubowitz, a researcher at RAND Corporation in Pittsburgh, told
Reuters Health.
More than one-third of U.S. adults are obese, putting them at
increased risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain
cancers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. Among all adults nationwide, nearly half of
African-Americans and more than 40 percent of Hispanics are obese,
as are about a third of Caucasians.
While many factors can contribute to obesity, poverty and lack of
quality grocery stores close to home are two important contributors,
Dubowitz said.
Dubowitz and colleagues surveyed a population with 80 percent of
participants reporting household income of less than $20,000 a year.
Just 33 percent were employed. They lived in what's known as a food
desert, an area with limited access to healthy foods.
Just under one third of the participants said they “always” shopped
with a grocery list, while another 17 percent did so often and 26
percent did so occasionally.
People who used grocery lists all the time were more likely to be
female and older, less likely to be employed, and more likely to be
trying to eat fewer calories.
After controlling for these factors, the researchers found that
dietary quality remained significantly higher among participants who
always shopped with a list.
The study team also weighed participants and measured their heights
to calculate body mass index (BMI), a ratio of weight to height. A
BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 is considered healthy weight, 25 to 29.9
is considered overweight and 30 or above is obese.
Using a shopping list was also associated with having a BMI about
one point lower compared to people who didn’t use lists. That
amounts to a weight difference of about five pounds for somebody
whose height is 5' 5" (1.65 meters).
The researchers acknowledge in the Journal of Nutrition Education
and Behavior that the study isn't designed to show shopping lists
cause people to be healthier, only that there is a link between the
two.
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They are also following residents over a longer period of time to
see if the opening of a new grocery store in the community changes
people's dietary habits or makes a dent in obesity rates, Dubowitz
said.
"Shoppers don't have control over the availability of healthy
produce or their pricing; those problems will require structural
interventions to fix them such as attracting grocery stores to move
into food deserts," Dr. Ichiro Kawachi, chair of social and
behavioral sciences at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston,
said by email.
Given the lack of groceries and other structural problems
encountered by the study participants, the findings "suggest that
there are things that people can do for themselves" to pursue
healthy eating habits, said Kawachi, who wasn't involved in the
study.
It's possible that some things people did to eat healthier food and
maintain a lower weight had nothing to do with shopping lists, said
Dr. Jason Block, associate director of the obesity prevention
program in the department of population medicine at Harvard Medical
School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute.
He noted that the modest one-point difference in BMI linked to
grocery lists makes it more likely that some other behavior not
measured in the study may have explained the change.
"It's quite likely that using a list is a behavior linked to other
healthful behaviors," Block, who wasn't involved in the study, said
by email.
Still, it points to the power of advance planning to help improve
impulse control, Kawachi said.
"The typical supermarket these days is carefully engineered so that
they are constantly tempting customers to make impulse purchases and
unwise food choices (e.g. placing candies at the checkout)," Kawachi
said. "Having a plan and sticking to it is a good start to
pre-committing yourself to a healthy purchase pattern."
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1AHJNjd
Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, online May 7, 2015.
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