The prevalence of overweight among children has increased significantly over the past two decades. Because overweight in childhood appears to track into adulthood, the public health consequences of these trends necessitates early intervention and prevention efforts. Poor dietary intake has been identified as an important factor associated with overweight. Despite an increase in educational campaigns targeting children's dietary intake, the rate of overweight continues to rise. Researchers have begun to adopt ecologically-informed perspectives to addressing public health problems, including child overweight. Three studies were conducted to explore the role that social and physical environments play in influencing fruit and vegetable intake and weight status among pre-adolescent children and their parents.

The first study, a literature review, was conducted to identify the current evidence available regarding the food environment (food store outlets). Studies that were included examined the role that sociodemographic and neighborhood-level variables play in the availability and accessibility of food stores. Additionally, a review of studies that examined associations between the food environment and health behaviors was included in the study. Finally, the methodological aspects of the studies were examined and suggestions for future research were presented.

The second study examined the role of food spending behaviors and perceptions on fruit and vegetable intake among preadolescent children and their parents. Results from the cross-sectional study of 555 parent/child dyads indicated that certain aspects of the social environment (i.e. household food spending, perceptions of food costs) are associated with fruit and vegetable intake. The third study was conducted to examine the relationships between neighborhood characteristics, food store availability and accessibility and parent-reported fruit and vegetable intake and/or weight status. This was a cross-sectional study of 797 preadolescent children (ages 6-11) participating in an obesity prevention program. Individual-level variables were daily fruit and vegetable intake and body mass index. Social and physical environment variables included percent of poverty within neighborhoods (census tracts) and mapped grocery store locations. Nearly 50% of high poverty neighborhoods had no grocery stores within their boundaries. Children in high poverty neighborhoods consumed fewer servings of fruits and vegetables (t=4.03, p<0.001) than children in low poverty neighborhoods.