The purpose of this study is to analyze, based on evidence, factors preventing the elderly from maintaining a healthy diet by using a revised food access indicator that takes food availability in stores into account. The area being studied is A City, a regional city in the northern Kanto region of Japan. The dependent variable in the study was dietary diversity score, which is a measure of the risk of adverse health effect caused by deterioration of diet. Multilevel analysis was used for the analysis of factors to allow individual level factors and group level factors to be analyzed independently.
Regarding the individual level factors, results of the analysis suggest that FDs problems are present in areas with reduced food access, reduced social capital, or both, which supports the previous finding of FDs study groups. Among the group level factors, the presence of a store within a close distance of 500m most strongly affected the diet of the elderly. However, when a supermarket with nearly 100％ food availability was located about 400m away or further, the condition for raising dietary diversity score from low to high was not met. In contrast, when the data was analyzed by assuming the shopping range to be 2km each way, the availability of a store as fully stocked as a supermarket within about 1.3km met the condition for raising dietary diversity score from low to high.
