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AVAILABILITY OF HEALTHY FOOD IN DIFFERENT CATEGORIES OF MARKETS IN RIYADH

Dr. Ibrahim Gossady, Khaled Alshehri, Ghazi aldalbahi , Khalid Alqarni, Abdullah aldawas, Mashhour Alzarie.

Objectives: To assess and compare the availability of healthy food, To compare the price of healthy food between supermarket, groceries and convenience stores, To assess the presence of section that only contains healthy food. Methods: We divided markets into three categories (Supermarkets – Grocery stores – Convenience stores) And divided Riyadh into 4 regions to insure that the data represent the whole regions of Riyadh. Data were entered to Microsoft Excel 2010 then the data transferred to Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), proportions used to assess level of availability of healthy food and Chi-square used to test for statistical difference in availability. Anova and Post Hoc Test used to assess the presence in difference of price of healthy foods. Results: Availability of healthy food items differ based on the size of the stores, large stores contain more than small stores especially In vegetables and fruits groups. Only Drinks group showed no significant difference ( p-value 0.465 ) with the highest percentage of availability among other groups while Miscellaneous group showed the least percentage of availability between different markets.The difference in price between the three different commercial outlets is not significant except in meats group.Healthy food sections was found in two out of seventy markets. Conclusion: Availability of healthy food items increase with the increase of stores size. There is no price difference between different markets except meats group. Healthy food sections was found in two out of seventy markets Keywords: Healthy food; healthy food Cost; less healthy food cost; nutrition

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