A recent study from the University of Cambridge used artificial intelligence to determine the areas of the UK with the healthiest food options.
Researchers sought to understand the relationship between the abundance of unhealthy restaurants and socio-economic status throughout the UK. They looked at whether areas had more restaurants and cafes versus takeaway options, as the latter is more likely to have an unhealthy menu.
The overall study found that areas with a lower income had more food options, but those options were usually unhealthy fast food. Areas with a higher socioeconomic status had less options, but more healthy menus.
In the most impoverished areas, there were 8.39 food outlets per 1,000 to 3,000 people, compared to just 3.85 in the least deprived areas, the study found.
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The findings “highlight the double burden faced by people living in the most deprived areas, where there tend to be more food outlets per capita – more than double the number in the least deprived areas – and these outlets tend to be less healthy,” according to Cambridge.
Studies have found that in general, the more people eat out, the more unhealthy their diet. That’s because restaurants, cafes, and drive-thrus are more likely to be higher in calories, salt and saturated fats.
The researchers examined menus from almost 55,000 eateries on Just Eat, a food ordering and delivery platform. They gave each menu a score on a scale of 0 to 12, with 12 being the healthiest.
To expand their research beyond the Just Eat platform, they used AI to help ensure better accuracy of the study.
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“The team turned to an artificially-intelligent ‘deep learning’ model, trained on a subset of Just Eat data, to predict menu healthiness of every out-of-home food outlet in Britain – a total of almost 180,000 outlets.”
They broke the food outlets up into four categories: cafes, snack bars and tea rooms; fast food and takeaways; pubs, bars and inns; and restaurants.
They found the order of healthiest to least healthy by category was restaurants, then cafes, snack bars and tea rooms, then pubs, bars and inns and then fast food and takeaways.
To determine the healthiest areas of the UK, they then mapped the food outlets. The areas with the healthiest options were City of London, Kensington and Chelsea, and Westminster. The areas with the least healthy menus were Northeast Lincolnshire, Luton, and Kingston upon Hull.
