Compare methods

	Modified Retail Food Environment Index	Foodshed Analysis
Field	Food Agriculture Studies	Food Agriculture Studies
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2011	2009
Originator	U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity	Christian J. Peters, Nelson L. Bills, Jennifer L. Wilkins, Gary W. Fick & Arthur J. Lembo
Type	Spatial ratio index of healthy to all food retailers by census tract	Spatial modelling pipeline for food-source areas and localization capacity
Seminal source	Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2011). Children's Food Environment State Indicator Report, 2011 — Census Tract Level State Maps of the Modified Retail Food Environment Index (mRFEI). Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, CDC.	Peters, C. J., Bills, N. L., Lembo, A. J., Wilkins, J. L., & Fick, G. W. (2009). Mapping potential foodsheds in New York State: A spatial model for evaluating the capacity to localize food production. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, 24(1), 72-84.
Aliases	mRFEI, Modified Food Environment Index, CDC Retail Food Environment Index, Healthy Food Retailer Ratio	Foodshed Modelling, Foodshed Mapping, Food Self-Sufficiency Analysis, Localization Capacity Analysis
Related	4	4
Summary	The Modified Retail Food Environment Index (mRFEI) is a spatial measure, developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that summarises the retail food environment of a small area as the percentage of healthy food retailers among all food retailers in that area. For each census tract, the CDC counted healthy retailers (supermarkets, larger grocery stores, supercenters and produce stores) and less-healthy retailers (fast-food restaurants, convenience and small grocery stores) from national business databases, then expressed the index as healthy divided by all, times 100. Released in the 2011 Children's Food Environment State Indicator Report with census-tract maps for every U.S. state, the mRFEI offers a scalable, secondary-data way to flag food deserts (no retailers) and food swamps (dominated by less-healthy outlets) and to study how the food landscape relates to diet and obesity.	Foodshed analysis is a spatial method for understanding where a population's food comes from, or could come from, by analogy with a watershed: just as a watershed delineates the land that drains to a river, a foodshed delineates the land area capable of feeding a given population centre. Christian Peters, Nelson Bills, Jennifer Wilkins, Gary Fick and Arthur Lembo formalised the modern, spatially explicit version in 2009, mapping potential foodsheds in New York State by matching geographically distributed agricultural production capacity to the food demand of population centres and allocating supply by proximity. The result quantifies how much of a region's food needs could be met locally — its localization capacity and self-sufficiency — and which land areas would supply which cities. Foodshed analysis has become a core tool for assessing the feasibility and sustainability of regional and local food systems.