Recommendations for Responsible Food Marketing to Children

The marketing of unhealthy foods to children and youth is a major public health concern. Children in the United States grow up surrounded by food and beverage marketing, which primarily promotes products with excessive amounts of added sugar, salt, and fat, and inadequate amounts of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. This document provides a comprehensive More

Barriers to Equity in Nutritional Health for U.S. Children and Adolescents: A Review of the Literature

This review summarizes growing evidence of disparities in the social and physical environments of U.S. children and adolescents that likely contribute to increased risk for obesity and poor nutrition. The review examines literature on disparities in nutrition and healthy food access in school, child-care, and residential neighborhood environments, food production and marketing practices, and cultural More

Is Scratch-Cooking a Cost-Effective Way to Prepare Healthy School Meals with U.S. Department of Agriculture Foods?

This paper examines whether school lunch entrees made in a district from basic or raw U.S. Department of Agriculture Foods ingredients can be healthier and/or less expensive to prepare than those sent to external processers. Information on the nutritional content and cost to prepare entrees was gathered through interviews with school food service personnel and More

Tapping Into Water: Key Considerations for Achieving Excellence in School Drinking Water Access

This paper examines free drinking water access in California public schools. Researchers conducted cross-sectional interviews with administrators from 240 California schools from May to November 2011 to examine the proportion of schools that met excellent water access criteria (i.e., location, density, type, maintenance, and appeal of water sources), school level characteristics associated with excellent water More

Informing School Policies and Practices to Ensure Access to Free High-Quality Drinking Water to Reduce Children’s Consumption of Sugary Beverages

Little empirical research has been done to support policies that increase access to free drinking water as part of comprehensive strategies to reduce consumption of sugary beverages and prevent childhood obesity. This study will examine beverage environments in 20 diverse high schools in King County, Wash., to guide the development of effective school water policies More

Children’s School-Related Food and Physical Activity Behaviors are Associated with Body Mass Index

This paper examines the associations between the food and physical activity environment in schools and body mass index (BMI) for lower-income boys and girls when they were in the 8th grade during 2007. Analyzing secondary data from the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999 (ECLS-K), researchers found that a number of More