Relationship between the concentration of fast food outlets and health
About 2 mins
Key points
- On average, neighbourhoods with a lower concentration of fast food outlets tend to have higher life expectancy.
- Fast food outlets make up nearly one in three (32%) of all food establishments in the fifth of neighbourhoods with the highest concentration of fast food outlets.
The relationship between people living in an area’s health and availability of fast food is complex. On one hand, food from fast food outlets tends to be higher in fat, salt and sugar. Regularly consuming this type of food can lead to weight gain, and subsequent associated problems such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Living in an area with a high proportion of fast food outlets increases someone’s exposure to unhealthy products, although that does not necessarily translate into higher consumption.
At the same time, people living in areas with a higher concentration of fast food outlets are more likely to be in poor health. This is because there is a higher concentration of fast food outlets in more deprived areas, and deprivation is itself strongly associated with poor health.
This chart shows life expectancy for men and women by concentration of fast food in their neighbourhood.
- Neighbourhoods with lower concentration of fast food outlets tend to have higher life expectancy.
- Men’s life expectancy in neighbourhoods with the lowest concentration of fast food outlets is 80.8, compared with 78.7 in areas with the highest.
- Women’s life expectancy in neighbourhoods with the lowest concentration of fast food outlets is 84.4, compared with 82.8 in areas with the highest.
- Fast food outlets make up nearly one in three (32%) of all food establishments in the fifth of neighbourhoods with the highest concentration of fast food outlets. This compares with no fast food outlets in the fifth of neighbourhoods with the lowest concentration.
The higher concentration of fast food outlets in certain areas could be due to many interrelated factors, including urban design or town planning, and economic effects such as the tendency for similar types of outlets to cluster together.
The concentration of fast-food outlets in a neighbourhood is just one of many neighbourhood-specific characteristics that affect health. Availability and affordability of healthy food, access to green space and air pollution are some of the others. As with concentration of fast-food outlets, the relationship between these factors and health is affected by wider neighbourhood factors such as income levels, housing and education, some of which can be captured by a composite measure of deprivation.
- Fast food outlets are defined by slightly adapting the method set out by Public Health England.
- Information on food outlets, their type and location was extracted from the Food Standards Agency’s Food Hygiene Rating Scheme dataset.
- Fast food outlets are restaurants that are classified as ‘takeaway/sandwich shop’ in the dataset. Restaurants tagged as ‘restaurant/cafe/canteen’ in the dataset and including the terms ‘McDonald’, ‘Kentucky’, ‘Domino’s’, ‘Papa John’, ‘chicken’, ‘pizza’, ‘burger’, ‘grill’, ‘chip’, ‘KFC’, ‘kebab’, ‘fish bar’, ‘India’, ‘Chinese’ and ‘China’ as part of their name are also classified as fast food outlets.
- The concentration of fast food outlets is calculated as the percentage of all food establishments in each neighbourhood.
- Neighbourhoods are defined as Middle layer Super Output Areas (MSOAs), based on 2011 Census areas. MSOAs are geographical areas that comprise 2,000–6,000 households (5,000–15,000 people).
- The analysis is restricted to MSOAs in England only, due to the availability of life expectancy data at this geographical level.
- Life expectancy is defined as the number of years a person of a specific age in a specific area in a specific time period can be expected to live, if mortality rates for that area and time period remain constant. Due to the small population numbers of MSOAs, life expectancy is calculated for a period of five consecutive years in order to reduce the effect that seasonal events (such as the flu) might have on the number of people dying.
Data source: Health Foundation analysis of Food Standards Agency, Food Hygiene Rating Scheme data, UK, 2022; Office for National Statistics, Life Expectancy at Birth for Middle layer Super Output Areas, England, 2016–20
