Research & Publications | Healthy Eating Research

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Toddler milk: a scoping review of research on consumption, perceptions, and marketing practices

Toddler milk is an ultra-processed beverage consisting primarily of powdered milk, caloric sweeteners, and vegetable oil. Pediatric health authorities do not support the use of toddler milk, and emerging evidence suggests that toddler-milk marketing practices may mislead consumers. However, studies have not synthesized the extent of toddler-milk marketing practices or how these practices affect parents’ More

Date: May 2023

Resource Type: Journal Article

Focus Areas: Beverages Early Childhood Food Marketing

Policy Opportunities and Legal Considerations to Reform SNAP-Authorized Food Retail Environments

Research was conducted using Lexis+ to evaluate statutes, regulations, and case law to determine the legal feasibility of requiring retail-based SNAP signage and nutrition disclosures, healthy endcaps and checkout aisles, and tying advertising restrictions to the licensing of SNAP retailers. Requiring retailers that designate certain foods or locations as SNAP-eligible to consistently do so in More

Date: March 2023

Resource Type: Journal Article

Focus Areas: Food Retail Nutrition Policy & Programs

Reducing Student Exposure to Digital Food and Beverage Marketing: Policy and Practice Recommendations

Digital marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages to children and adolescents is pervasive, highly effective, undermines healthy eating, and contributes to health inequities. Expanded use of electronic devices and remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the urgency for policy interventions to limit digital food marketing in schools and on school-issued devices. The US More

Keywords: Digital marketing

Date: March 2023

Resource Type: Journal Article

Focus Areas: Food Marketing School & After School

Which Healthy Food Promotion Strategies Within Grocery Retail Settings Are Most Promising?

This review identifies intervention strategies implemented within U.S. grocery retail stores that are effective in improving the healthfulness of shoppers’ food and beverage purchasing and consumption. Results from our review demonstrate that nutritional scoring and nutritional messaging were the most rigorously tested and effective interventions. Additionally, simple interventions yield the most successful results and minimize More

Date: December 2022

Resource Type: Research Brief

Focus Areas: Food Retail

Encouraging Healthier Food and Beverage Purchasing and Consumption: A Review of Interventions within Grocery Retail Settings

This review identifies the most promising intervention strategies for promoting the purchase and consumption of healthier items within U.S. grocery retail settings, with a particular focus on those strategies that may be most effective when implemented within SNAP-authorized retail settings. Searches of nine electronic databases, as well as forward and backward searches, yielded 1942 studies. More

Date: December 2022

Resource Type: Journal Article

Focus Areas: Food Retail

Reducing Student Exposure to Digital Food and Beverage Marketing

Digital marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages to children and adolescents is pervasive and undermines healthy eating. During the COVID-19 pandemic, students’ time spent online for both recreation and school using educational technology doubled from 3.8 to 7.7 hours per day for 12- to13-year-olds, and racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities widened with children of color More

Keywords: Digital marketing

Date: July 2022

Resource Type: Report

Focus Areas: Food Marketing School & After School

A click too far from fresh foods: A mixed methods comparison of online and in-store grocery behaviors among low-income households

A recent policy in the U.S. authorized monthly benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to be used online to increase grocery access and promote healthy eating. This study examined online grocery attitudes and purchasing behaviors among low-income SNAP-eligible households with young children with and without online grocery experience. An explanatory sequential mixed methods More

Date: April 2022

Resource Type: Journal Article

Focus Areas: Food Retail Nutrition Policy & Programs

Food Marketing Practices of Major Online Grocery Retailers in the United States, 2019-2020

Food marketing influences consumers’ preferences for and selection of marketed products. Although a substantial body of research has described food-marketing practices in brick-and-mortar stores, no research has examined food marketing in online grocery retail despite its growing importance as a source of food-at-home purchases. This study aimed to develop and apply a coding instrument to More

Date: April 2022

Resource Type: Journal Article

Focus Areas: Food Marketing Food Retail

Child-Directed Marketing, Health Claims, and Nutrients in Popular Beverages

Fruit drinks are a major source of added sugar in children’s diets. This study describes the associations between front-of-package child-directed marketing (i.e., sports, fantasy, or child-directed imagery; child-directed text) and (1) health-related claims and (2) nutrient content of fruit drinks, 100% juices, and flavored waters. Beverage purchase data from a national sample of 1,048 households More

Date: April 2022

Resource Type: Journal Article

Focus Areas: Beverages Early Childhood Food Marketing

Nutrition-related claims lead parents to choose less healthy drinks for young children: a randomized trial in a virtual convenience store

Consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, including fruit drinks, contributes to childhood obesity. We aimed to examine whether nutrition-related claims on fruit drinks influence purchasing among parents and lead to misperceptions of healthfulness. We conducted an experiment in a virtual convenience store with 2219 parents of children ages 1-5 y. Parents were randomly assigned to view fruit More

Date: April 2022

Resource Type: Journal Article

Focus Areas: Beverages Food Retail