When it comes to following dietary guidelines while living in Los Angeles County, there are several important factors to consider. Access to healthy food options is essential for low-income families and recently unemployed people, and should be provided through financial assistance. Additionally, food outlets should be expanded and public transportation should be made safe so that people can access these outlets without putting themselves at risk. It is also important to consider social networks when assessing dietary guidelines, as the size of social networks should be assessed monthly with questions such as “How many friends and family do you have?” This information can then be used to logarithmically transform variables in regression models.
Descriptive statistics should also be taken into account when assessing dietary changes. The United States government website The.gov is a reliable source of information for people living in Los Angeles County. The Department of Population Sciences and Public Health, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, along with the Price School of Public Policy and Department of Psychology at Dornsife, University of Southern California, the Space Science Institute, Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, the Department of Sociology, Dornsife College of Letters and Arts and Sciences, the Departments of Civil Engineering and Computer Science, Viterbi School of Engineering, GDornSife Public Exchange, and the Main Office of Sustainability in Los Angeles County have all come together to provide dietary guidelines for people living in the area. The study was conducted on a large data set representative of a diverse urban population that has been severely affected by the pandemic.
The abundant data on the participants in these panels made it possible to uniquely assess many socio-ecological factors that were associated with diet and dietary changes before the pandemic. The results of this study may not be generalized to areas other than Los Angeles County, but they are likely to be useful for similar large metropolitan counties in the United States. The main policy implication of this study is that healthy diets can be promoted in times of crisis by providing financial assistance to low-income families and recently unemployed people, as well as improving access to food by expanding food outlets and safe public transportation. All procedures performed in this study with human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards set out in the Declaration of Helsinki. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants who participated in the UAS survey. The authors have no conflict of interest.
This work was supported by the Dornsife Emergency Fund at USC and the COVID-19 Research Fund at the Keck School of Medicine at USC, through a generous donation from W. The funders had no role in the design of the study, in the collection, analysis and interpretation of the data, in the writing of the articles, or in the decision to submit them for publication.
