Visualizing nutritional terrain: a geospatial analysis of pedestrian produce accessibility in Lansing, Michigan, USA Kirk Goldsberry a *, Chris S. Duvall b , Philip H. Howard c and Joshua E. Stevens a a Department of Geography, Michigan State University, Lansing, Michigan, USA; b Department of Geography, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA; c Department of Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resource Studies, Michigan State University, Lansing, Michigan, USA (Received 5 April 2010; final version received 12 July 2010) This article considers how geospatial analyses can influence cartographic outputs in studies of the spatial structure of food environments. We make two contributions. First, we present a new approach to conceiving and visualizing urban food environments as ‘nutritional terrains’, in which the opportunities and costs of locating (healthful) food vary continuously across space. While other researchers have conceptualized and represented food environments as contin- uous phenomena, we use detailed data to produce maps of food accessibility that have high resolution both spatially and in terms of food availability. Second, we show that decisions made about measuring and modelling food accessibility can create artifactual patterns independently of actual variation in food-environment characteristics. Although the type of method-driven patterning we identify will not surprise cartographers, we argue that non-geographers using geographic information technologies to visualize food environments must give greater attention to the unintended consequences of choices made in geospatial analyses. Keywords: food environments; accessibility; visualization Introduction Built environments may constrain dietary choices, and contribute to diet-related public health problems, including overweight and obesity, diabetes and cardiovas- cular disease (French et al. 2001, Papas et al. 2007, Ford and Dzewaltowski 2008). Fundamentally, many of the public health problems observed in the developed world arise from over-consumption of calorie-dense, nutrient-poor foods, such as processed foods, and concomitant under-consumption of nutrient-dense, calorie- poor foods, such as fresh produce (Halkjær et al. 2009, Liese et al. 2009). Adequate consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables contributes to better health outcomes (Zenk et al. 2005a,b, Adebawo et al. 2006, Morland and Filomena 2007), yet millions of people who can afford to purchase these foods continue to under- consume them. In the United States, researchers are devoting more attention to the role of environmental context in food consumption patterns (Shaw 2006, Beaulac et al. 2009). *Corresponding author. Email: kg@msu.edu Geocarto International Vol. 25, No. 6, October 2010, 485–499 ISSN 1010-6049 print/ISSN 1752-0762 online Ó 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/10106049.2010.510583 http://www.informaworld.com Downloaded By: [Goldsberry, Kirk][Michigan State University] At: 11:49 23 September 2010