Environmental and Societal Factors Affect Food Choice and Physical Activity: Rationale, Influences, and Leverage Points

Dietary and physical activity behaviors that affect health are influenced by a wide variety of forces; changes in these behaviors require interventions and commitment to action at multiple levels.l.2 Education-based obesity-prevention strategies (e.g., mass-media promotion of healthy foods and promotion of healthy physical activity habits through schools) are viewed as the most useful and the most feasible to im~lementIm.~p licit in these strategies is the focus on the individual? Education-based strategies have met with limited long-term success in changing behavior: however, perhaps owing to a general lack of supporting environmental modifications. There is increasing recognition of the importance of the…