There are a number of methodological differences between the
study by Moore et al. and ours. Whereas Moore et al. (2009) assessed
binary fast-food consumption near a participant’s home (yes/
no), we asked for overall fast-food consumption and used a
categorization that incorporated frequency per week. Additionally,
whereas Moore et al. (2009) collected data on persons living in
urban areas, most of our participants resided in rural areas. On
average, participants in our study had 0.5 fast-food restaurants
present within a 1-mile buffer around their home compared to 2
fast-food restaurants in the study by Moore et al. (2009). In terms
of subjective measures of fast-food availability, our participants reported
low perceived neighborhood fast-food availability (mean of
1.83 on a scale ranging from 0 to 4); Moore et al. (2009) observed
a much higher self-reported fast-food availability among their subjects
(mean of 3.5 on a scale ranging from 0 to 4). Interestingly, even
though fast-food availability was lower in our study population, the
percentage of people who reported consuming fast food at least one
time per week was much higher (40.6% in our study vs. 29.7% in
Moore et al., 2009)