- Author: Christina EA Hecht
- Editor: Danielle L. Lee
- Editor: Lorrene Ritchie
University of California's Research Consortium on Beverages and Health, with support from the American Heart Association, has released six short fact sheets to help educate both community members and decision-makers on the risks of over-consumption of sugary drinks. The fact sheets aim to provide the evidence base, expressed in simple talking points:
- What are Sugary Drinks? and 7 Reasons to Skip Sugary Drinks provide simple insights into sugary drink ingredients and how they can be harmful.
- The Health Harms of Sugary Drinks gives facts on the leading health risks of consuming these drinks.
- Sugary Drinks and COVID illustrates how sugary beverages, with their risk to cardio-metabolic health, can worsen the impact of diseases such as COVID-19.
- The Heavy Environmental Impact of Sugary Drinks provides data that illuminate the consequences of sugary drink consumption on the environment.
- How Four Cities in California are Using Sugary Drink Tax Revenue showcases how excise taxes levied on distributors of sugary drinks have funded projects to improve health in vulnerable populations in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and Albany, California.
The Consortium is comprised of faculty working across the field of sugar science from all ten UC campuses and UC Agriculture and Natural Resources. The Consortium is coordinated by the Nutrition Policy Institute under the leadership of Christina Hecht, Ken Hecht, and Pat Crawford. Please contact Ken Hecht for more information about the Consortium and Christina Hecht for additional resources for community education on healthy beverage choices.
- Author: Katherine Lanca
- Editor: Danielle L. Lee
- Editor: Christina Hecht
- Editor: Lorrene Ritchie
Christina Hecht, senior policy adviser with the University of California's Nutrition Policy Institute, was featured in a Food & Environment Reporting Network (FERN) article titled “Why America's food-security crisis is a water-security crisis, too,” published on November 20, 2022. Hecht's research on drinking water safety, access, and consumption informs her advocacy for equitable water access. Her work also highlights water's importance, as an alternative to sugar-sweetened beverages. She also coordinates the National Drinking Water Alliance, founded under NPI's leadership in 2015 with the mission of enabling people to choose water. In the FERN article, Hecht highlights the link between making healthy beverage choices and tap water safety, saying, “We discussed whether we needed to prioritize making sure that tap water was safe, but in 2015, we really didn't think that that was a big issue. Then Flint happened.” This story also appeared in Mother Jones journal on November 25, 2022.
- Author: Katherine Lanca
- Editor: Danielle L. Lee
- Editor: Ron Strochlic
- Editor: Gail M Woodward-Lopez
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A new research brief developed by the Nutrition Policy Institute describes a study that identified limited implementation of California's Healthy Default Beverage Law (SB 1192) for orders made online. The law requires restaurants selling children's meals that include a beverage to make the default beverage water, sparkling water, flavored water with no added natural or artificial sweeteners, or unflavored milk or non-dairy milk alternative. Researchers randomly sampled 226 fast food restaurants located in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program-Education (SNAP-Ed) eligible census tracts in California and “ordered” 631 kids' meals from restaurant websites and three popular online ordering platforms. Researchers recorded beverage offerings as well as additional charges (“upcharges”) for beverages. Findings indicate that only 6% of orders reflected optimal implementation of the Healthy-by-Default Beverage law. Further, 41% of orders that offered water had an upcharge ($0.51 on average) and 11% of orders that offered unflavored milk had an up charge ($0.38 on average). No observations had upcharges for soda. The findings indicate that, in order to support California's SNAP-Ed goal for reducing sugar sweetened beverage intake, specific language, monitoring, and future legislation may be necessary to ensure the law is applied to online-ordering and in-restaurant self-service kiosks. The study and research brief were authored by NPI's Cal Fresh Healthy Living Evaluation Unit, including Hannah Thompson, Ron Strochlic, Sonali Singh, Kaela Plank, Anna Martin, and Gail Woodward-Lopez.
For the second time since 1969, the White House is holding a conference on US nutrition. The White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, planned for September 2022, aims to provide a comprehensive package of strategies to reduce hunger and improve nutrition and health in the US. Under the direction of Ambassador Susan Rice and in coordination with the Department of Health and Human Services, the White House Conference team actively sought input from Americans, both to tell personal stories about hunger, nutrition and health and to offer recommendations for strategies. Nutrition Policy Institute's Christina Hecht submitted recommendations to promote and enable drinking water in place of sugary drinks. Hecht was also part of a national drafting team for recommendations for strategies to reduce sugary drink consumption. Others at NPI have also participated in several listening sessions to inform the White House Conference.
- Author: Danielle L. Lee
- Editor: Lorrene Ritchie
Despite a recent study suggesting that children drink fewer sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) the longer they participate in the federal Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), new findings from a study conducted with a large sample of WIC-participating families in Los Angeles county suggest this is not true for all racial/ethnic groups. While longer WIC participation can mitigate disparities in sugar-sweetened beverage intake between children from white and Hispanic families, Black children from families reporting 5 and 10 years of participation in WIC consumed 33 and 45% more daily servings of fruit-flavored SSBs than those from families reporting 1 year on WIC. The study also suggests that WIC participation may not support increased drinking water intake among participating children. These new and unexpected findings were published in February 2022 in Nutrients by lead author Christopher Anderson from Public Health Foundation Enterprises WIC (PHFE-WIC) in collaboration with Catherine Martinez and Shannon Whaley from PHFE-WIC, Lorrene Ritchie from the UC ANR Nutrition Policy Institute, and Keelia O'Malley from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. The research was supported by First 5 Los Angeles.