Table 4.
Associations of individual components of a healthy food environment with healthy and unhealthy eating
| Estimated association with composite Healthy Eating Index | Estimated association with healthy foods | Estimated association with unhealthy foods | ||||
| Beta (95% CI) | p-value | Beta (95% CI) | p-value | Beta (95% CI) | p-value | |
| Regular family meals (REF: No) |
0.13 (-0. 82, 1.07) |
0.7944 | -0.08 (-0.66, 0.51) |
0.8008 | 0.05 (-0.37, 0.46) |
0.8299 |
| TV is not on during dinner (REF: TV is on) |
0.8 (0.24, 1.36) |
0.0052 | 0.26 (-0.09, 0.61) |
0.1429 | -0.27 (-0.51, -.02) |
0.0349 |
| Child did not eat at a restaurant on the previous day (REF: Had at least one restaurant meal) |
1.46 (0.73, 2.2) |
<.0001 | -1.18 (-1.64, -0.73) |
<.0001 | -2.11 (-2.44, -1.79) |
<.0001 |
| Availability of healthy foods at the family dinner table (range: 0-4) | 0.76 (0.54, 0.98) |
<.0001 | 0.38 (0.24, 0.51) |
<.0001 | -0.15 (-0.25, -0.06) |
0.0019 |
| Restriction of unhealthy foods at the family dinner table (range: 0-2) | 0.35 (-0.01, 0.71) |
0.0590 | -0.06 (-0. 29, 0.16) |
0.5786 | -0.25 (-0.41, -0.09) |
0.0021 |
| Difference between lowest and highest educational category, before adjusting for home food environment | -1.1 (-2.04, -0.15) |
0.0227 | 0.17 (-0.42, 0.76) |
0.5693 | 0.88 (0.46, 1.31) |
<.0001 |
| Difference between lowest and highest educational category, after adjusting for home food environment | -1.04 (-2.01, -0.07) |
0.0356 | 0.17 (-0.44, 0.77) |
0.5895 | 0.84 (0.41, 1.27) |
0.0001 |
NOTES: SPAN Healthy Eating Index (SHEI) is a composite measure combining responses to consumption of healthy foods and unhealthy foods, scaled to 100, and coded so that higher scores represent healthier diets. See Table 1 for a listing of the healthy and unhealthy foods comprising the SHEI. This table examines the composite SHEI, as well as the healthy foods and unhealthy foods components separately.