Evaluation of supermarkets and food stores to be used in food assistance programs, systematic revision

Promoting a healthy intake of food for reaching the caloric and nutrient requirements of the population should be the aim of the food and nutrition policies of a country. In order to accomplish this objective, in nutrition transition communities and/or low income populations, government intervention might be required through food assistance programs for improving purchase food power and increase the availability of high quality foods at affordable prices. A way to facilitate the distribution and ameliorate the accessibility of different foods is to incorporate supermarket, markets and other types of food stores to canalize the programs objectives in particular to improve savings for the acquisition of foods. The aim of this systematic review was to search in data bases evidence based literature on the topic of food stores used in assistance food programs. 7 articles related to the topic were found. The main findings to describe how important were the markets for improving the distribution and accessibility of high quality foods were: closeness of the store to neighborhoods, the availability of foods since what cannot be found cannot be purchased, nutrition education at the store and disparities in the quality of foods between affluent and low income neighborhoods. All this reasons should taken into account when programming the actions to be taken for food assistance programs(AU)