Nutrition Policy Institute (NPI) director and cooperative extension specialist Lorrene Ritchie commented on why school meals matter now more than ever as the United States is grappling with two major public health crises, the COVID-19 pandemic and systemic racism and inequities. The invited commentary was published online on August 20, 2020 in the journal Public Health Nutrition. Ritchie's commentary describes how the USDA National School Lunch Program (NSLP), which provided over 4.8 billion lunches to nearly 30 million children in the US during the 2018-2019 school year, supports improved food security for all students. This is important as students from lower income non-Hispanic Black or Hispanic families who have higher rates of participation in the NSLP than their non-minority counterparts. Given the historic levels of food insecurity Americans are now facing due to the COVID-19-related economic downturn, and the disproportionate effect it is having on black families, Ritchie also cites the importance of the NSLP in supporting health equity through improved nutrition. Ritchie shares evidence from a recent nationally representative study conducted by colleagues at Boston University School of Medicine which shows that NSLP participating students' diet quality improved after the school meal nutrition standards were updated in 2012-2013 to align with the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, as mandated by the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act (HHFKA) of 2010. Ritchie closes her commentary requesting public health researchers, practitioners and policy makers (1) object to any rollbacks to the HHFKA nutrition standards, and (2) advocate for school meals to be made available to all students without additional charge. The commentary is available 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.
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.