This paper examines the impact of a rewards-based incentive program on fruits and vegetable purchases in a supermarket located in a predominately minority community in Philadelphia, Pa. Researchers conducted a four-phase prospective cohort study with randomized intervention and wait-listed control groups. Households in the intervention were provided a 50 percent rebate on fresh or frozen More
Some public health advocates and policymakers are proposing restrictions on the types of foods eligible for purchase with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, such as sugary drinks and food products with minimal nutritional value. To date, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has rejected all such proposals due to lack of research on whether More
This paper analyzes the role of prices in determining food purchases and nutrition using a detailed transaction-level observation for a large, nationally-representative sample of U.S. consumers over the years 2002-2007. Using structural demand estimates, researchers simulated the effect of a 20 percent product tax on soda, other sugar-sweetened beverages, packaged meals, and snacks, and 20 More
This paper examines the effects of food prices on clinical measures of obesity, including body mass index (BMI) and percentage body fat (PBF) measures derived from bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) and dual energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA), among youths ages 12 to 18. Using three waves of National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data (1999-2000, More
A sedentary lifestyle lacking physical activity, and consumption of calorie-dense foods and sugary drinks, have long been associated with obesity. But studies indicate that the inflation-adjusted cost of food, which has been falling, is also contributing to the recent epidemic of obesity. This issue brief highlights the results of a study published in Economics and More
This article discusses the results of the School Nutrition Advances Kids (SNAK) project which examined the effectiveness of various nutrition interventions on the diets of lower-income middle school students in Michigan. Schools were randomly assigned to one of four experimental groups: 1) completed an assessment of nutrition education policies and environments using the Healthy School More
This study will take advantage of a unique natural experiment to evaluate the ways in which the home food environment modifies the effects of a new full-service supermarket on children’s diet in a low-resource, urban, African American neighborhood. The study has two specific aims: 1) to determine the effect of the new supermarket on children’s More
This article assesses the nutritional quality of foods that are advertised with familiar children’s characters. It also examines how frequently familiar characters are paired with health messages in these advertisement. A total of 577 food advertisements that were aired on the most popular broadcast and cable channels during 2011 were included in the study. Researchers More
In 2009, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) was modified to align the WIC food packages with the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. As part of the revisions, WIC added a fruit and vegetable (F/V) voucher to the food packages. This paper describes a quasi-experimental study that examined whether F/V More
This paper examines trends in the nutritional quality of emergency foods in six California food banks from 2007 to 2010. Over the four-year study period, researchers found a substantial increase in fruit and vegetable donations. In 2010, fruits and vegetables accounted for over half, on average, of the total weight of foods and beverages at More
Newsletter
Contact
