A team of Montana State University faculty members and graduate students has found that the quality of available produce at grocery stores is lower in rural areas compared to more urban areas.
The team’s findings were published today in Preventing Chronic Disease, a journal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As part of the study, Carmen Byker Shanks and Selena Ahmed, both assistant professors in the MSU College of Education, Health and Human Development’s Department of Health and Human Development, along with Teresa Smith of the Gretchen Swanson Center for Nutrition in Nebraska and several MSU graduate students, assessed availability, prices and quality of produce in 20 grocery stores across 17 towns in 12 Montana counties. The locations differed in terms of how rural they are considered to be, and the team randomly selected stores to be surveyed in each location.
The authors used what is called the Nutrition Environment Measurement Survey for Stores to assess the quality of fruits and vegetables. To follow these assessment standards, the researchers examined individual pieces of produce for signs of its condition. Those signs included color, cleanliness and the fruit or vegetable’s level of firmness, as well as evidence of bruising, shriveling, softening or mold.
The team found that while fruits and vegetables are as widely available and costly in rural stores as in urban stores, the quality of the produce is significantly lower in more rural areas, Ahmed said.
“The average quality score in the most rural grocery stores was 3.5 out of 6, while the least rural stores showed a quality score of 5.67 out of 6,” she said.
The findings may help explain why people living in rural areas to are less likely to consume the recommended servings of fruits and vegetables, according to Byker Shanks, the study’s lead author.
