Abstract

In recent decades, the importance of acting on the contextual factors of obesity has been highlighted, including food environments. The Perceived Nutritional Environment Measurement Survey, NEMS-P-Ch, was recently validated in Chile. However, there is no national research that has evaluated the perception of the degree of obesogenicity/healthiness of these environments, and it is not known if they differ between households of different socioeconomic status (SES). This study aims to compare the perception of food environments between households in high and low socioeconomic neighborhoods in Santiago, Chile. Cross-sectional study, using systematic random sampling of households. The Survey NEMS-P-Ch was applied to 256 households (128 in each commune). Its application provides an overall score and scores associated with the perception of each environment. People from the high SES neighborhoods have higher monthly family income, a higher proportion of people with completed higher education and a lower number of habitants in the household, compared to the low SES neighborhoods. When comparing the global score, participants from the commune of high SES perceive the food environment as healthier than the habitants of lower SES and there are significant differences in three of the four environments evaluated (home environment, organizational environment and street food). While most of the environments are perceived as food swamps, the domestic environment in both neighborhoods is perceived as healthier, assimilated to the idea of a food oasis. These results should mobilize national and local actions to improve the availability and access to healthy foods, especially in those places and neighborhoods of lower SES, which perceive their food environments as more obesogenic.