The Rise of Modern Supermarkets Puts Health Choices at Your Fingertips

Supermarkets are actively responding to the demand for healthier choices from consumers, say industry officials. And some recent studies found grocery stores have actually emerged as the No. 1 source when it comes to promoting healthy diets.

“The grocery store has evolved to meet consumer needs and wants in step with a growing desire to stay healthy and well,” said Krystal Register, senior director of health and well-being for the Food Marketing Institute in an interview with Smart Way.

“The food retail setting provides a unique opportunity for registered dietitian nutritionists and retail pharmacists to address gaps in healthcare, improve public health, and meet consumer demands for nutrition, health, and well-being services,” she said.

If fact, the food choices made by store managers may play a bigger role in a healthy diet than listening to advice from Mom, the sentimental choice, or even your medical provider, a recent study from the University of North Carolina School of Public Health suggests.

That conclusion is based on stats from the long-running National Institutes of Health Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study, which began 40 years ago and is funded through 2028. The data, detailing information on the dietary habits of thousands of residents in predominantly Black and White neighborhoods in Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, and North Carolina, show that in each neighborhood access to supermarkets—defined as grocery stores with more than $2 million in sales each year—is an important player in how consumers gather healthful-eating information.

So the recent wave of openings by Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, and Wegmans should be a welcome addition to the city supermarket landscape.

Simply put, the more supermarkets the neighborhood hosts, the more fruits and veggies the locals are likely to consume. And each new supermarket opened in a poor neighborhood more than doubles customers’ consumption of healthful plant foods while reducing by more than 20 percent the amount of fat in their diet.

The first supermarket in the US, a King Kullen, opened Aug. 4, 1930, on Jamaica Avenue in Queens. Today, there are an estimated 100-plus supermarkets here in Manhattan, at least one of which is certain to be within walking distance for you. In addition, any neighborhood that lacks a supermarket will have a clutch of bodegas, health-food stores, and specialty sites such as the popular Amish Market, all likely to sell fresh produce off the bin or in prepared salads.

Meanwhile, how else do supermarkets promote healthful diets? Healthy Eating Research (HER), a national program part of the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, recently released data based on research that aims to understand the strategies that best increase consumer demand for healthier products. The report, “A National Research Agenda to Support Health Eating Through Retail Strategies,” was reviewed in a special issue of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. HER research analyst Kirsten Arm says both the study and the review outline “10 key issue areas that emerged as priorities for future research—five focus on understanding the current food retail environment and consumer behavior and five focus on assessing implementation and effectiveness of interventions and policies.” Among them: understanding the food retail environment, consumer shopping behaviors, targeted food marketing, and food retail design layouts.

Two research teams from HER also analyzed the effectiveness of government policies and in-store plans in promoting healthy eating already in place. Not surprisingly, they discovered that special price and sales increase access to healthy food products such as those fruits and veggies, and that promoting direct labels and along with food samples also worked. (Conversely, so does taxing sweetened beverages.)

HER hopes that by showing effective initiatives and highlighting areas for new research that retail interventions will improve and grow working relationships and partnerships between retailers and researchers.

In Arm’s words, quoted on the website foodtank.com, “Improving the retail food environment through [policy, systems, and environment] strategies is one piece of the puzzle in the long-term goal of ensuring all consumers, especially lower-income and racial and ethnic minority population groups, have equitable access to healthy food.”