Community Nutrition
When it comes to the overall health of a community, what its residents eat and drink – and what sort of access they have to nutritious foods – are key factors.
The 2022 Healthiest Communities rankings explore the critical role location plays in determining the health and well-being of the hundreds of millions of people who live in the U.S., assessing close to 3,000 counties and county equivalents on dozens of critical factors that shape and show the health of a community and its residents. Falling into 10 key categories – including food and nutrition – these factors include things such as poverty rate, job diversity, air quality and cancer incidence, offering insight into how where you live can dictate how well you live.
To rate a community’s performance in the food and nutrition category, U.S. News evaluated seven metrics in two areas: food availability and nutrition. The metrics include a community’s access to large grocery stores and local food outlets like farmers markets, as well as the prevalence of diabetes and obesity.
These are the 25 communities that scored the highest for food and nutrition in the Healthiest Communities analysis, along with the metrics in which they excelled most and their overall Healthiest Communities score and rank.
Scores listed are out of 100 points, and you can learn more about individual Healthiest Communities metrics and how communities are scored in our methodology.