- Author: Danielle L. Lee
The National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs help reduce food insecurity and improve nutrition for school-aged children. The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) allows schools with high levels of children in poverty to offer breakfast and lunch at no cost to all students. It was introduced through the bi-partisan Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 to increase participation of low- to moderate-income students in the federal school meals programs. The CEP automatically reimburses schools for a fixed percentage of meals corresponding with their poverty level, making universal meals financially viable by reducing administrative costs and improving economies of scale in meal preparation and distribution. Nutrition Policy Institute (NPI) researchers' latest study suggests that when high-poverty schools implement CEP, participation in the school breakfast and lunch programs for students who are near or above the cut-off for free or reduced priced meals increases. Data for the study came from the 2013-2014 Healthy Communities Study, funded by the National Institutes of Health. NPI researchers compared 842 kindergarten through eighth-grade students from 80 schools implementing CEP to 1,463 students from 118 schools without CEP. The study was published on August 4, 2020 in the Journal of School Health by lead author May Lynn Tann of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Evidence for Action program at the University of California (UC), San Francisco. Additional study authors include Barbara Laraia and Kristine Madsen of the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, Rucker Johnson of the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy, and Lorrene Ritchie of the Nutrition Policy Institute. The study abstract is available online. For full access to the study, please email may.lynn.tan@ucsf.edu.
Retailer attitudes pertaining to excise taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) are shared in a new study by Nutrition Policy Institute (NPI) affiliated researchers Kristine Madsen and Jennifer Falbe. In response to evidence that SSBs increase the risk of chronic diseases such as obesity, heart disease, and diabetes, three California cities—Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco—have enacted excise taxes on distributors of SSBs. The beverage industry claims that SSB taxes are harmful to retailers and local economies, and that they lead to taxation of other food products, a so-called “grocery tax.” Madsen's team investigated these claims to see how they hold up..
Researchers conducted interviews in 2018 and 2019 regarding the effect of SSB excise taxes on small and large grocers, corner and liquor stores, and various chain stores, as well as the attitudes of the retailers who sell such products. A random sample of 103 retailers in Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco were selected for interviews from neighborhoods ranging from lowest to highest median household incomes. Study findings show, contrary to beverage industry messaging, that 70% of retailers in the three cities experienced minimal or no impact on their businesses as a result of tax. While a minority of retailers expressed reservations about the SSB tax, two-thirds held a favorable view of it. More than half of the retailers in the study said the tax should be enacted by more cities, or even rolled out statewide. Furthermore, no evidence emerged to support the beverage industry's claim that prices of non-SSB foods have been raised as a result of the tax, invalidating the “grocery tax” messaging. The study was published online on May 28, 2020 in Preventive Medicine Reports by lead authors Julian Ponce with the University of California (UC), Berkeley School of Public Health and Haoxuan Yuan with the UC San Francisco Center for Vulnerable Populations (CVP). The study was conducted in collaboration with Dean Schillinger and Ryane Daniels of the CVP; Hina Mahmood and Matthew Lee of the UC Berkeley School of Public Health; NPI affiliated researcher Jennifer Falbe of the UC Davis Department of Human Ecology; and senior author Kristine Madsen of the Berkeley Food Institute and UC Berkeley School of Public Health.
Read the full article in Preventative Medicine Reports here.
Oakland and San Francisco, Calif. became the first large, western U.S. cities to pass excise taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) in November 2016 with the goal of reducing SSB consumption and raising revenues for public health education. Nutrition Policy Institute (NPI) affiliated researchers examined how much the excise taxes increased retail prices for SSBs in Oakland and San Francisco. In their latest study, they found that retail prices of SSBs significantly increased by approximately the amount of the excise taxes–1 cent per fluid ounce–within four to 10 months of implementation. The prices of beverages that were not taxed–water, milk, and 100% juice–were unaffected. The study was published online on May 21, 2020 in the American Journal of Public Health by lead author Jennifer Falbe with the University of California (UC), Davis Department of Human Ecology. The study was conducted in collaboration with Scott Kaplan of the UC Berkeley Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Alberto Ortega Hinijosa of IMPAQ International, Kristine Madsen of the Berkeley Food Institute and UC Berkeley School of Public health, and Matthew Lee and Nadia Rojas of UC Berkeley School of Public Health.
Nutrition Policy Institute (NPI) and UC Berkeley School of Public Health researchers published a new study in partnership with the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) on the impact of a multi-component intervention to increase students' lunch participation in SFUSD public middle and high schools. The study, titled "The Impact of a Multipronged Intervention to Increase School Lunch Participation among Secondary School Students in an Urban Public School District" was published in Childhood Obesity by UC Berkeley researchers Hannah Thompson and Kristine Madsen; NPI's Wendi Gosliner and Lorrene Ritchie; UC Berkeley doctoral alumna Annie Reed; and SFUSD's Orla O'Keefe and Kate Wobbekind. Data are from a 3-year quasi-randomized study among 24 secondary schools, half of which received an intervention including cafeteria redesign, additional school lunch points-of-sale (mobile carts and vending machines), and teacher education. This research was funded by USDA's Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program.
