“How do we expect children to learn at school if they are hungry?” says Mónica Zuercher, of the Nutrition Policy Institute. The Los Angeles Times featured Zuercher, a nutritional epidemiologist, in a story about the permanent implementation of the Universal School Meals Program in California starting in the 2022-2023 school year. Zuercher identified the school cafeteria as a place to increase nutritional security. “Nutritional standards are in place at the national level, establishing the nutritional qualities that school meals need to have. So, it is important to highlight that not only two free meals are being offered in schools, but it's also two healthy meals,” she says. The Universal School Meal Program, initially a federal COVID-19 emergency measure, is now being permanently implemented in California and several other states. Zuercher and other researchers at the Nutrition Policy Institute will continue to evaluate the universal school meals program to inform and improve implementation. “It is a very exciting study because it examines multiple stages of universal school meals, from it's beginnings as a measure generated by COVID-19, to the challenge that it presents schools to have a large increase in the number of students participating in the program,” explained Zuercher. Preliminary findings from this research include reports from food service directors who say providing meals to all students free of charge has led to an increase in student participation, reductions in school meal debt and stigma related to meal participation. The original Los Angeles Times article “Big logistical challenge involves free food in schools. How to solve it?” was published on September 15, 2022 in Spanish. Follow updates related to this project on NPI's School Meals for All webpage.

Nutrition Policy Institute inaugural director and UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources cooperative extension nutrition specialist, Lorrene Ritchie, was featured in the USDA National Institute for Food and Agriculture's Women's History Month spotlight on March 21, 2022. In the spotlight–which highlights leading women helping advance agriculture-related sciences–Ritchie shared about her NIFA-funded research, a typical workday, how she has overcome personal challenges, her role models and the people and things that inspire her, and also provided advice to girls and young women desiring to enter the field of nutrition. “First, find good mentors and collaborators. You don't know what you don't know, and they can help you navigate the possibilities! Second, do not be afraid to pursue big ideas. You can be a change-maker at all levels of research. Third, build as you go. No one study is going to solve all nutrition problems – there is so much science to do! Over time and collectively, you can make a difference in the everyday lives of people!” The full spotlight is available on the USDA NIFA website.

California will invest $20 million in the Healthy Refrigeration Grant Program, which offers grants to individual stores as well as organizations to expand access to fresh foods in communities experiencing reduced access to fresh, diverse foods. Civil Eats highlighted the investment in a Feb. 22, 2022 article titled ‘California Gives a Big Boost to Corner Stores that Sell Fresh Produce'. The article features evaluation findings of the grant program led by Nutrition Policy Institute researcher Wendi Gosliner in collaboration with Marisa Tsai and Elsa Esparza. Gosliner's research is quoted as “store owners noted that the Healthy Refrigeration Grant Program's California-grown specification posed a significant hurdle. Some produce doesn't have origin labels at all, making it impossible to determine if it qualifies, and sometimes the fruits and vegetables that customers prefer aren't available at an affordable price from California growers.”

Nutrition Policy Institute senior researcher and policy advisor, Wendi Gosliner, was featured in an article in Western FarmPress about a pilot program for San Diego County CalFresh participants to receive monthly text messages about the benefits of California-grown fruits and vegetables. Gosliner worked to evaluate the pilot program in collaboration with the UC San Diego Center for Community Health and the County of San Diego Health and Human Services Agency. Gosliner is quoted as, “In a text, you have very few characters you're communicating with people, so we wanted to make sure we were using cutting-edge behavioral science to construct those messages to have the most impact." A majority of the program recipients who received messages from September 2020 to March 2021 responded to a survey saying they appreciated receiving the text messages. Gosliner reports, “What we see is that there's definitely a decent-sized population of people participating in CalFresh – now this is just in San Diego County but imagine the entire state – who would benefit from having this kind of information available to them, and there is at least a subset of people who really liked it."