The term ‘foodscape’ first appeared in academic literature in 1995, and is increasingly encountered in the English-speaking literature. This concept is etymologically defined by Adema as “a marriage between food and landscape, both the conceptual notion (idea) of landscape and actual, physical landscapes”. Other scholars use the foodscape concept to address what appear to be similar food issues. They hence conceive the food environment primarily as a physical/external context in which individuals evolve. Within the food environment field, scholars scrutinize environmental variables and try to distinguish their impact on food behaviors from individual variables (such as sociodemographic characteristics, psychosocial factors). in areas where physical access to grocery stores and supermarkets is limited, could hence be a health issue. The main research question addressed is the influence of food environment on diet and health. These studies distinguish the community environment (types of outlets, accessibility), the consumer environment (within-store availability of healthy options, price, nutrition information), and the organizational food environment (home, school or work). Much of the scientific literature, including several recent reviews, defines the food environment with reference to the seminal conceptual framework of Glanz et al. Concerning food, the HLPE report defines the ‘food environment’ as “the physical, economic, political and socio-cultural context in which consumers engage with the food system to make their decisions about acquiring, preparing, and consuming food”.

Like other authors, this report suggests that health and well-being are affected by the living environment (e.g. However, the progressive realization of this right will not be achieved without more sustainable food systems that facilitate healthy and sustainable food choices”. The review concludes with a research agenda, arguing that people-based and place-based approaches need to be combined to tackle the complexity of the food-people-territory nexus.Īs reported by the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE): “Every human being has the right to adequate food. Foodscape studies principally address three issues: public health, social justice, and sustainability. They share a systemic way of thinking, considering culture and experience of food as key to improving our understanding of how food systems affect people.

Scholars consider that the foodscape is not an environment external to individuals but a landscape including, perceived, and socially shaped by individuals and policies. In the three other approaches, ‘foodscape’ and ‘food environment’ are not synonymous.

In the spatial approach, the term ‘foodscape’ is synonymous with ‘food environment’. Thus, although spatial analysis was the first approach to foodscapes, sociocultural, behavioral and systemic approaches are becoming more common. (iv) Systemic approaches contest the global corporate food regime and promote local, ethical, and sustainable food networks. (iii) Behavioral approaches generally focus on indoor micro-scales, showing how consumer perceptions of foodscapes explain and determine food behaviors and food education. (ii) Social and cultural approaches at the same scales show that foodscapes are socially shaped and highlight structural inequalities by combining qualitative case studies and quantitative surveys of food procurement practices. Analyzing 140 publications, we highlight four approaches to the foodscape: (i) Spatial approaches use statistics and spatial analysis to characterize the diversity of urban foodscapes and their impacts on diet and health, at city or neighborhood scales. We searched publications using the term foodscape in the Web of Science Core Collection, MEDLINE, and Scopus databases. This article presents a scoping review of the literature examining how this term is employed and framed. Since 1995, the term ‘foodscape’, a contraction of food and landscape, has been used in various research addressing social and spatial disparities in public health and food systems.

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