Guide 8: Defining what “healthy food” means for food retail initiatives

This guide aims to describe evidence-informed approaches to defining food healthiness and summarize examples of food classification systems applicable to retail food initiatives.

This resource is one of 16 that form the ‘Best Practice Guides for Conducting Healthy Food Research’ – designed to support researchers and anyone else involved in planning, conducting, evaluating, or communicating healthy food retail research.

Suggested citation: Scapin T, Boelsen-Robinson T, Naughton S, et al. A best practice guide for conducting healthy food retail research: A resource for researchers and health promotion practitioners. Obesity Reviews. 2025;e13870.doi:10.1111/obr.13870.

For more information

Visit the ‘best-practice guides for conducting healthy food retail research’ project page for more information on the project and to access all the guides.

Read the journal article to learn how the guides were developed and peer reviewed.