Spatial Racial Segregation and Healthy Food Availability Inequities in major Brazilian cities

preprint OA: closed CC-BY-4.0

Abstract

Food deserts represent a critical dimension of food insecurity and health, yet their relationship with racial spatial segregation remains understudied in Global South contexts. This study examines the relationship between racial spatial segregation and the presence of food deserts across 319 Brazilian cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Using data from the 2022 Census, we calculated the proportion of Black residents in 231,901 census tracts and classified food retail availability based on the Locais–Nova classification of food establishments. Food deserts were defined as tracts with a density of healthy food outlets below the 25th percentile. Racial spatial segregation was assessed using Local Indicators of Spatial Association to identify local patterns of racial concentration and contrast. More than 77% of Brazilian urban census tracts were classified as food deserts, with high prevalence in the North and Northeast regions. Poisson models showed that racial spatial segregation remained significantly associated with the prevalence of food deserts after adjustment for income: High–High clusters, areas where Black populations are spatially grouped with similar neighboring tracts, had 30% (95% CI: 1.29–1.32)  higher probability to be a food desert when compared with compared to Low-Low clusters, those tracts with a predominance of White residents in predominantly White surroundings. These findings demonstrate that racial spatial segregation independently contributes to unequal access to healthy food retail, reinforcing structural disadvantages faced by Afro-Brazilian communities.
Full text 8,185 characters · extracted from preprint-html · click to expand
Spatial Racial Segregation and Healthy Food Availability Inequities in major Brazilian cities | SciELO Preprints window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);} gtag('js', new Date()); gtag('config', 'G-3TT8HYRH0Y'); Open Menu Registrar-se Acesso English Español Ir para o conteúdo principal Ir para o menu de navegação principal Ir para o rodapé Preprints Submissão Áreas do Conhecimento Ciências Agrárias Ciências Biológicas Ciências da Saúde Ciências Exatas e da Terra Ciências Humanas Ciências Sociais Aplicadas Engenharias Linguística, letras e artes Educação em Revista Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz 47º Encontro Anual da ANPOCS 48º Encontro Anual da ANPOCS 49º Encontro Anual da ANPOCS Sobre Sobre o Servidor Declaração de Privacidade Atualizações do Sistema Contato FAQ Ética no SciELO Preprints Avaliação de preprints Anotações em preprints (via Hypothesis) Avalie um preprint Notícias Início / Ciências da Saúde Preprint / Versão 1 Spatial Racial Segregation and Healthy Food Availability Inequities in major Brazilian cities article.authors6a125be91d61f Raquel Canuto Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul image/svg+xml Conceptualization Formal Analysis Methodology Project Administration Writing – Original Draft Preparation Writing – Review & Editing Supervision Giovani Longo Rosa Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul image/svg+xml .st0{fill:#A6CE39;} .st1{fill:#FFFFFF;} https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7947-7180 Data Curation Formal Analysis Visualization Lauren Yurgel da Silva Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul image/svg+xml .st0{fill:#A6CE39;} .st1{fill:#FFFFFF;} https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5907-566X Formal Analysis Data Curation Software Visualization Writing – Original Draft Preparation Dafne Pavão Schattschneider Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul image/svg+xml .st0{fill:#A6CE39;} .st1{fill:#FFFFFF;} https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0201-206X Formal Analysis Methodology Data Curation Fernanda Bortolaz Pivetta Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul image/svg+xml .st0{fill:#A6CE39;} .st1{fill:#FFFFFF;} https://orcid.org/0009-0007-2349-4890 Formal Analysis Data Curation Willian Luiz da Conceição Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina image/svg+xml .st0{fill:#A6CE39;} .st1{fill:#FFFFFF;} https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0100-0080 Writing – Original Draft Preparation Writing – Review & Editing Júlio Celso Borello Vargas Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul image/svg+xml .st0{fill:#A6CE39;} .st1{fill:#FFFFFF;} https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8321-5362 Conceptualization Formal Analysis Methodology Writing – Original Draft Preparation Marcos Fanton Universidade Federal de Santa Maria image/svg+xml .st0{fill:#A6CE39;} .st1{fill:#FFFFFF;} https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5360-3647 Conceptualization Writing – Review & Editing Writing – Original Draft Preparation DOI: https://doi.org/10.1590/SciELOPreprints.14336 Palavras-chave: racism , segregation, food environment , spatial segregation Resumo Food deserts represent a critical dimension of food insecurity and health, yet their relationship with racial spatial segregation remains understudied in Global South contexts. This study examines the relationship between racial spatial segregation and the presence of food deserts across 319 Brazilian cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Using data from the 2022 Census, we calculated the proportion of Black residents in 231,901 census tracts and classified food retail availability based on the Locais–Nova classification of food establishments. Food deserts were defined as tracts with a density of healthy food outlets below the 25th percentile. Racial spatial segregation was assessed using Local Indicators of Spatial Association to identify local patterns of racial concentration and contrast. More than 77% of Brazilian urban census tracts were classified as food deserts, with high prevalence in the North and Northeast regions. Poisson models showed that racial spatial segregation remained significantly associated with the prevalence of food deserts after adjustment for income: High–High clusters, areas where Black populations are spatially grouped with similar neighboring tracts, had 30% (95% CI: 1.29–1.32) higher probability to be a food desert when compared with compared to Low-Low clusters, those tracts with a predominance of White residents in predominantly White surroundings. These findings demonstrate that racial spatial segregation independently contributes to unequal access to healthy food retail, reinforcing structural disadvantages faced by Afro-Brazilian communities. Downloads Os dados de download ainda não estão disponíveis. PDF (Inglês) Postado 11/12/2025 Como Citar Spatial Racial Segregation and Healthy Food Availability Inequities in major Brazilian cities. (2025). Em SciELO Preprints . https://doi.org/10.1590/SciELOPreprints.14336 Formatos de Citação ACM ACS APA ABNT Chicago Harvard IEEE MLA Turabian Vancouver Baixar Citação Endnote/Zotero/Mendeley (RIS) BibTeX Série Ciências da Saúde Copyright (c) 2025 Raquel Canuto, Giovani Longo Rosa, Lauren Yurgel da Silva, Dafne Pavão Schattschneider, Fernanda Bortolaz Pivetta, Willian Luiz da Conceição, Júlio Celso Borello Vargas, Marcos Fanton Este trabalho está licenciado sob uma licença Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License . .citations-container { overflow-y: auto; overflow-x: hidden; max-height: 1000px; } Plaudit Declaração de dados Os dados de pesquisa estão disponíveis sob demanda, condição justificada no manuscrito Aviso de preprints Preprints são manuscritos não avaliados por um periódico científico ou já avaliados mas em processo de publicação. .block_announcements_article:not(:last-child) { padding-bottom: 1.5em; border-bottom: 1px solid; } .block_announcements_article { text-align: left; } .block_announcements #show-all{ font-style: italic; } Notícias SciELO Preprints adota obrigatoriedade de declaração de disponibilização de dados de pesquisa 19 agosto 2025 A partir de 1º de setembro de 2025 os manuscritos submetidos ao SciELO Preprints devem incluir uma declaração de disponibilidade de dados informando sobre onde e como os dados da pesquisa que deram origem ao artigo podem ser acessados. Atualização da Política Editorial e FAQ 21 maio 2025 Todos(as) os(as) autores(as) são solicitados(as) a consultarem a nossa Política Editorial e nossas FAQs antes de submeterem o seu manuscrito. Prêmio Ben Barres Spotlight: Inscrições abertas para 2024 20 maio 2024 Prêmios de até US$ 5.000 estão agora disponíveis para pesquisadores de origens sub-representadas ou países com financiamento limitado para apoiar sua pesquisa, carreira e comunidade. Preprints do SciELO Preprints nas ciências da vida ou biomédicas com pelo menos uma revisão disponível no Sciety são elegíveis! Show all announcements ... SciELO - Scientific Electronic Library Online Rua Dr. Diogo de Faria, 1087 – 9º andar – Vila Clementino 04037-003 São Paulo/SP - Brasil E-mail: [email protected] app = {"hypothesisHandlerUrl":"https:\/\/preprints.scielo.org\/index.php\/scielo\/$$$call$$$\/plugins\/generic\/hypothesis\/controllers\/hypothesis\/"}; var pkpUsageStats = pkpUsageStats || {};pkpUsageStats.data = pkpUsageStats.data || {};pkpUsageStats.data.Submission = pkpUsageStats.data.Submission || {};pkpUsageStats.data.Submission[14336] = {"data":{"2025":{"12":"41"},"2026":{"1":"6","2":"35","3":"13","4":"21","5":"10"}},"label":"Todos os downloads","color":"79,181,217","total":126}; var pkpUsageStats = pkpUsageStats || {};pkpUsageStats.locale = pkpUsageStats.locale || {};pkpUsageStats.locale.months = ["Jan","Fev","Mar","Abr","Mai","Jun","Jul","Ago","Set","Out","Nov","Dez"];pkpUsageStats.config = pkpUsageStats.config || {};pkpUsageStats.config.chartType = "bar"; (function (w, d, s, l, i) { w[l] = w[l] || []; var f = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0], j = d.createElement(s), dl = l != 'dataLayer' ? '&l=' + l : ''; j.async = true; j.src = 'https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=' + i + dl; f.parentNode.insertBefore(j, f); function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments)}; gtag('js', new Date()); gtag('config', i); }) (window, document, 'script', 'dataLayer', '3TT8HYRH0Y');

Text is read by the "Ask this paper" AI Q&A widget below. Extraction quality varies by source — PMC NXML preserves structure cleanly, OA-HTML may include some navigation residue, and OA-PDF can have broken hyphenation. The publisher copy (via DOI) is the canonical version.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Ask this paper AI returns verbatim quotes from the full text · source: preprint-html

Answers must be backed by verbatim quotes from this paper's full text. Hallucinated quotes are dropped automatically; if no verbatim passage answers the question, we say so. How this works

Citation neighborhood (no data yet)

We don't have any in-corpus citations linked to this paper yet. This is a recent paper (2025) — citers typically take a year or two to land, and the OpenAlex reference graph may still be filling in.

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-05-20T01:45:00.602351+00:00
unpaywall
last seen: 2026-05-26T02:00:01.498150+00:00
License: CC-BY-4.0