City-Level Travel Time and Individual Dietary Consumption in Latin American Cities: Results from the SALURBAL Study

There is limited empirical evidence on how travel time affects dietary patterns, and even less in Latin American cities (LACs). Using data from 181 LACs, we investigated whether longer travel times at the city level are associated with lower consumption of vegetables and higher consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and if this association differs by city size. Travel time was measured as the average city-level travel time during peak hours and city-level travel delay time was measured as the average increase in travel time due to congestion on the street network during peak hours. Vegetables and sugar-sweetened beverages consumption were classified according to the frequency of consumption in days/week (5–7: “frequent”, 2–4: “medium”, and ≤1: “rare”). We estimate multilevel ordinal logistic regression modeling for pooled samples and stratified by city size. Higher travel time (Odds Ratio (OR) = 0.65; 95% Confidence Interval (CI) 0.49–0.87) and delay time (OR = 0.57; CI 0.34–0.97) were associated with lower odds of frequent vegetable consumption. For a rare SSB consumption, we observed an inverse association with the delay time (OR = 0.65; CI 0.44–0.97). Analysis stratified by city size show that these associations were significant only in larger cities. Our results suggest that travel time and travel delay can be potential urban determinants of food consumption.