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
Keywords: Grocery store, Supermarket
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
Keywords: Grocery store, Supermarket
Food price inflation is an adverse outcome of COVID-19 that makes nutrition security more difficult for low-income families with children. School closures and pandemic-related assistance programs placed additional strains on the retail food system, which may have further amplified inflationary pressure on the cost of foods needed to support a healthy diet. The goal of More
Keywords: COVID-19, Supermarket
Date: July 2022
Resource Type: Grant Summary
Focus Areas: Nutrition Policy & Programs Pricing & Economics
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
Online ordering is an innovative method being pilot-tested in some stores to facilitate WIC participants’ food benefit redemption, which has become especially important in the COVID-19 pandemic. The present research aimed to examine the online ordering behaviors among 726 WIC households who adopted WIC online ordering in a grocery chain, XYZ (anonymous) store, in Oklahoma More
This study aimed to describe policies and practices of online grocery retailers that may affect healthy food access, including retailers participating in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Online Purchasing Pilot. This was a cross-sectional, quantitative content analysis of 21 online grocery retail websites from November 2019 to January 2020. Most retailers More
Keywords: Supermarket
The USDA Online Purchasing Pilot, which allows SNAP participants to shop and pay for groceries online, rapidly expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic. From March 2020 to March 2021, the number of participating states increased from 5 to 47. This brief assesses whether the Pilot promotes healthy food access (using the criteria of availability and utilization) More
The Click & Collect model is a three-step process for placing a WIC grocery order online, then picking it up and paying for it at the store. This model for online ordering could be an opportunity, during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, to address certain challenges to WIC shopping and benefit redemption. A pilot study More
The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), administered by the United States Department of Agriculture, is associated with improved healthy food and beverage access due to its requirement for minimum stock of healthy foods and beverages in WIC-eligible stores. The selection and authorization criteria used to authorize WIC vendors varies widely More
Keywords: Supermarket, Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)
Date: March 2021
Resource Type: Journal Article
Focus Areas: Food Access Nutrition Policy & Programs
Introducing new grocery stores into low-income communities has been a focus of policy efforts to improve the food environment. Yet, evidence of the impact of this strategy on diet and health outcomes is inconsistent. In Baltimore, a not-for-profit grocery store was opened by the Salvation Army in March 2018 with the goal of improving healthy More
Keywords: Supermarket