ABSTRACT

Supermarkets play a major role in influencing the food purchasing behaviours of most households. Snack food exposures within these stores may contribute to higher levels of consumption and ultimately to increasing levels of obesity, particularly within socioeconomically disadvantaged neighbourhoods. In this study, I examined the availability of healthy foods in selected retail stores in comparison to unhealthy foods, evaluate the nature of availability of food products which include placement of foods items by prominence in the supermarkets at Abakiliki using the INFORMAS protocol, and finally; identified the promotional features available in food stores. One supermarket and one grocery store was randomly selected by balloting method using Geographic Information System (GIS) enabled open data kit based on popularity and size. Food availability (ratio of total shelf and shelf space for healthy versus unhealthy foods), prominence (proportion of unhealthy foods at checkouts, entrance, aisle and endcaps), and promotion (promotional features/food marketing) were measured using INFORMAS protocol. The result revealed that Snack foods and sweet products display were dominant at checkouts and endcap A which are the highest prominent areas of supermarkets. At high prominent areas; unhealthy products were predominant with 46.55% shelves and 41.07% shelf space. At the medium prominence; unhealthy products were predominant with 25.93% shelves and 27.6% shelf space while healthy food items dominated the ‘edge’ which have the lowest visibility and so generally not conducive for healthy dietary choices.