(College Station)—To many people, going to grocery stores can be a chore.
For Brenda Bustillos, going to grocery stores helped her earn a master's degree in nutrition science from Texas A&M University.
Bustillos, who earned her degree in December and is also a registered dietitian, spent about four months, from May to September last year, visiting 44 stores in Madison and Burleson counties.
"I, along with my committee chair, developed a survey to measure the availability of healthful foods in two rural Texas counties in the Brazos Valley," she said. "The survey sample consisted of all grocery, convenience and discount stores in two rural counties."
The hope is that one day Bustillos' research will help bring more nutritious food choices to rural areas and thereby help foster better overall health for residents of these areas. But in doing this study, the researchers learned some unexpected lessons, said Bustillos and Joseph Sharkey, chair of Bustillos' research.
For one thing, all of the 44 food-selling businesses in these two counties were cooperative with the researchers, Sharkey said. With the permission of the businesses' management, Bustillos was able to visit every food-selling store in those two counties to survey what food choices were available in those locations.
"No one turned her down," Sharkey said, not even stores that are part of national chains. "That says a lot."
They also found that, anecdotally speaking, stores in rural areas seem to be more aware of their customers' needs and more willing to meet those needs, Sharkey said.
Another discovery was that, regardless of the type of store, low-fat dairy products were always available, but low-fat sandwich meats were not, he said. Through education and community outreach, research such as Bustillos' may help change that, he added.
The survey was based on recommendations of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005—MyPyramid—Bustillos said. The rural areas in the study are those with 10,000 population or less.
Bustillos hopes her research, along with more such studies in the future, will help change public policy, empower communities and organize agencies' collaborations in ways that will lead to better nutrition education and increased availability of healthful food in rural areas, she said.
Her work wasn't done as a stand-alone effort, said Sharkey, who is an associate professor in the department of social and behavioral health at Texas A&M. It will be part of an ongoing research effort that will reach beyond the Brazos Valley.
Sharkey is also director of the Texas Healthy Aging Research Network Center, which is one of nine centers in the U.S. funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, he said. This agency is part of the Center for Community Health Development, a CDC-funded Prevention Research Center at the Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Rural Public Health. Bustillos' research is part of the Brazos Valley Food Environmental Project, he said, which is a larger project of the agency.
The healthy aging center and the health development center, along with "community partners such as the Brazos Valley Health Partnership, are working on linked projects and research that could eventually lead to better nutrition in rural communities," Sharkey said.
And that's where Bustillos' research comes in, he said. Her work will be a part of the total picture once this on-going effort is complete.
This research into availability of and access to healthful foods is "somewhat groundbreaking in rural communities," Sharkey said. That's because most comparable research has been done in urban areas. And those results don't necessarily translate to more rural areas.
Now that Bustillos has earned her master's degree, she has plans to work for a different agency.
"I've joined the Army Health Care Team," she said. "I'll be serving our country."
She hopes to begin her enlistment as an officer in April. 