Sue Babey and the folks over at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research are doing some really cool work looking at the relationship between your food environment (what kind of retail food establishments are available around your home) and health outcomes, like obesity. They have developed an index called the Retail Food Environment Index (RFEI), where the RFEI of a given area is calculated by (# of fast food stores + # of convenience stores)/(supermarkets + produce markets + farmers markets). Not surprisingly, areas that tend to be lower income neighborhoods have a much higher RFEI (meaning worse food environment) than affluent areas. Interestingly, the RFEI correlates with prevalence of obesity, even controlling for the income of people in the neighborhood, as well as a bunch of other demographic variables. Bring on the produce markets!