At fast food and sit-down restaurants across California, kids' meals come with water or milk automatically. At least, that should be the case since state law requires restaurants to offer the healthy beverages by default to reduce the amount of sugary beverages served to children. California Senate Bill 1192, authored by Sen. Bill Monning (D-San Luis Obispo), went into effect in January 2019, but research by the UC ANR Nutrition Policy Institute (NPI) has found that implementation has not been universal. The results, along with results from a similar study in Wilmington, Del., were published in an issue brief Aug. 20 on HealthyEatingResearch.org. Before the law, 10% of menu boards observed by the researchers in California list only the healthy beverages. Data collected after the law went into effect showed 66% of menu boards list the healthy default beverages. NPI researchers also collected data on the proportion of cashiers who verbally offered only healthy beverages with kids' meals when orders were placed. This happened only 5% of the time before the law was enacted, and dropped to 1% after. The law doesn't specify whether the cashier must offer the default beverages, but the spirit of the law suggests they should, as it would likely have a greater impact on the selections that children and parents make. In interviews with NPI researchers, most restaurant managers expressed support for the legislation, but didn't know much about it. The research brief was written by NPI researchers Lorrene Ritchie, Phoebe Harpainter, Marisa Tsai, Gail Woodward-Lopez and Wendi Gosliner in collaboration with lead author Allison Karpyn and Laura Lessard, Jesse Atkins, Kathleen McCallops and Tara Tracy of the University of Delaware. The research was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and by the California Department of Public Health with funding from the United States Department of Agriculture. Read the full research brief online.
- Author: Danielle L. Lee
Berkeley, California made history by passing the nation's first sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) tax paid by beverage distributors in 2014, which garnered unanimous support from City Council and 76% of the vote in a public referendum. NPI-affiliated researchers Jennifer Falbe (lead author) and Kristine Madsen published a new article titled “Implementation of the First Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Tax in Berkeley, CA 2015-2019” in the American Journal of Public Health. The article identifies policy and contextual characteristics that made the tax a success, shares recommendations for other cities, and highlights two critical findings. First, this tax on the beverage industry generated over $9 million that was invested into the community through public health and health equity programs. These programs aim to prevent the diseases caused by SSBs. Examples include the public school's Gardening and Cooking Program, a Head Start obesity prevention program, and Healthy Black Families' programs to reduce racial health inequities. The City's SSB tax advisory committee, which represents community and expert voices, was instrumental in making these investments, which are featured in short videos by The Praxis Project. Second, interviews with retailers indicated that beverage industry claims that SSB taxes amount to “grocery taxes” that raise food prices were false.
The article was published online ahead of print on July 16, 2020. Authors include Jennifer Falbe, UC Davis Department of Human Ecology; Anna H. Grummon, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Nadia Rojas, UC Berkeley School of Public Health; Suzanne Ryan-Ibarra and Lynn D. Silver, Public Health Institute; and Kristine Madsen, UC Berkeley School of Public Health and Berkeley Food Institute. Read the complete article online.
- 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.
- Author: Danielle L. Lee
A recent study by Nutrition Policy Institute (NPI) researchers assessed differences in quick-service, or fast-food, restaurants with and without voluntary healthy default beverage standards for kids' meals. ‘Voluntary standards' are restaurant commitments to offer healthier drinks with kids' meals. Researchers evaluated the beverages shown on kids' meal menu boards, beverages offered by cashiers with kids' meals, and kids meal beverages selected by customers in 111 quick-service restaurants--70 with voluntary standards and 41 without--in SNAP-Ed eligible neighborhoods in 11 California counties. Data was collected by menu board and cashier order observations and customer surveys in December 2018 prior to the January 2019 implementation of a new California law (SB-1192) that requires all restaurants offering a kids' meal make the default beverage offered water, unflavored milk or a nondairy milk alternative and that only these beverages be displayed on kids' meal menus or advertisements.
Results from the study showed that significantly more quick-service restaurants with voluntary healthy default beverage standards for kids' meals offered unflavored milk or water on their menu boards compared to restaurants without voluntary standards. Customers at restaurants with voluntary standards reported purchasing healthier drinks and less soda compared with customers at restaurants without voluntary standards. These results suggest the voluntary healthy default beverage standards were effective at positively influencing restaurant practices and customer behavior. However, not all quick-service restaurants followed their own standards and much room for improvement remains. Additional intervention may be necessary to support full implementation of the standards and to maximize the impact on customer behavior and jurisdictions passing healthy default beverage laws for restaurant kids' meals may need to provide education and outreach alongside enforcement to ensure full implementation. The study was published online on July 22, 2020 in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health by NPI researchers Phoebe Harpainter, Sridharshi Hewawitharana, Danielle Lee, Anna Martin, Wendi Gosliner, Lorrene Ritchie and Gail Woodward-Lopez. Read the full study online.
- Author: Danielle L. Lee
In May 2020, Nutrition Policy Institute researchers Suzanne Rauzon and Hallie Randel-Schreiber collaborated with Kaiser Permanente, Alliance for a Healthier Generation, and other national school health partners to survey educators across the nation about overall readiness to return to learning for the upcoming school year. Their results are available in a new research report released in July 2020, which describes the anticipated school health challenges, needs and priorities for schools in Fall 2020. Using findings from a survey and interviews of school staff and school health experts, the report examines the health challenges that are anticipated and resources needed to promote the physical and social-emotional health of the school community. It also includes reflections on the unexpected benefits or “silver linings” of the extensive disruption, rapid adaptations and changes experienced in spring 2020. The full report is available online.
