Search

The food retail environment has been directly linked to disparities in dietary behaviors and may in part explain racial and ethnic disparities in pregnancy-related deaths. 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 from state to state with little known about the specific variations. This paper reviews and summarizes the differences across 16 of these criteria enacted by 89 WIC administrative agencies: the 50 states, the District of Columbia, five US Territories, and 33 Indian Tribal Organizations. Vendor selection and authorization criteria varied across WIC agencies without any consistent pattern. The wide variations in criteria and policies raise questions about the rational for inconsistency. Some of these variations, in combination, may result in reduced access to WIC-approved foods and beverages by WIC participants. For example, minimum square footage and/or number of cash register criteria may limit vendors to larger retail operations that are not typically located in high-risk, under-resourced communities where WIC vendors are most needed. Results highlight an opportunity to convene WIC stakeholders to review variations, their rationale, and implications thereof especially as this process could result in improved policies to ensure and improve healthy food and beverage access by WIC participants. More work remains to better understand the value of state WIC vendor authorization authority, particularly in states that have provided stronger monitoring requirements. This work might also examine if and how streamlining WIC vendor criteria (or at least certain components of them) across regional areas or across the country could provide an opportunity to advance interstate commerce and promote an equitable supply of food across the food system, while ensuring the protection for local, community-oriented WIC vendors.

Poor nutrition is the leading cause of chronic illness, which 6 of every 10 adults in the United States face. Caring for these conditions necessitates ongoing, expensive medical care, with 85% to 90% of healthcare costs attributable to chronic diseases. Recognizing this nutrition crisis, the Biden-Harris Administration hosted a historic White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health that took place in September 2022. This conference was the first of its kind in more than 50 years and developed an agenda around a bold goal to end hunger and increase healthy eating and physical activity by 2030. The day before the 2022 conference, the Biden-Harris Administration released a National Strategy with actions the federal government would take across 5 pillars in addition to a fact sheet detailing more than $8 billion in new commitments from nongovernmental entities. Across the 5 pillars, this article summarizes the US Department of Agriculture accomplishments during the first 2 years of implementation and concludes with ways nutrition professionals can help accelerate progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is the position of the Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior that for effective recovery from and resilience to disasters, it is essential that impacted individuals and communities have access to safe, nutritious, and culturally and contextually appropriate foods and beverages, and receive emergency-related food and nutrition education before, during, and after a disaster. Despite the increasing number, duration, and intensity of disasters worldwide, there is relatively limited guidance for research, policy, and practice about addressing the emergency-related food and nutrition needs of affected populations. Although nutrition emergencies tend to be understudied, emerging efforts are working to advance food and nutrition security during disaster response and recovery. To help elevate the importance of emergency-related food and nutrition education before, during, and after a disaster, Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior, which represents the unique professional interests of nutrition educators worldwide, summarizes the relevant literature and puts forth recommendations for all those who are engaged in this work in the following 4 key areas: (1) improving communication and outreach, (2) fostering community engagement and locally-driven preparedness, (3) building the evidence base and translating the evidence into action, and (4) training current professionals and the next generation of public health leaders. Altogether, before, during, and after a disaster, those who engage in this work, among other allies, can help elevate the importance of nutrition education and other strategies to promote healthy eating behaviors through research, policy, and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BackgroundMost studies on the local food environment have used secondary sources to describe the food environment, such as government food registries or commercial listings (e.g., Reference USA). Most of the studies exploring evidence for validity of secondary retail food data have used on-site verification and have not conducted analysis by data source (e.g., sensitivity of Reference USA) or by food outlet type (e.g., sensitivity of Reference USA for convenience stores). Few studies have explored the food environment in American Indian communities. To advance the science on measuring the food environment, we conducted direct, on-site observations of a wide range of food outlets in multiple American Indian communities, without a list guiding the field observations, and then compared our findings to several types of secondary data.MethodsFood outlets located within seven State Designated Tribal Statistical Areas in North Carolina (NC) were gathered from online Yellow Pages, Reference USA, Dun & Bradstreet, local health departments, and the NC Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. All TIGER/Line 2009 roads (>1,500 miles) were driven in six of the more rural tribal areas and, for the largest tribe, all roads in two of its cities were driven. Sensitivity, positive predictive value, concordance, and kappa statistics were calculated to compare secondary data sources to primary data.Results699 food outlets were identified during primary data collection. Match rate for primary data and secondary data differed by type of food outlet observed, with the highest match rates found for grocery stores (97%), general merchandise stores (96%), and restaurants (91%). Reference USA exhibited almost perfect sensitivity (0.89). Local health department data had substantial sensitivity (0.66) and was almost perfect when focusing only on restaurants (0.91). Positive predictive value was substantial for Reference USA (0.67) and moderate for local health department data (0.49). Evidence for validity was comparatively lower for Dun & Bradstreet, online Yellow Pages, and the NC Department of Agriculture.ConclusionsSecondary data sources both over- and under-represented the food environment; they were particularly problematic for identifying convenience stores and specialty markets. More attention is needed to improve the validity of existing data sources, especially for rural local food environments.

It is the position of the American Dietetic Association (ADA), School Nutrition Association (SNA), and Society for Nutrition Education (SNE) that comprehensive, integrated nutrition services in schools, kindergarten through grade 12, are an essential component of coordinated school health programs and will improve the nutritional status, health, and academic performance of our nation's children. Local school wellness policies may strengthen comprehensive nutrition services by encouraging multidisciplinary wellness teams, composed of school and community members, to work together in identifying local school needs, developing feasible strategies to address priority areas, and integrating comprehensive nutrition services with a coordinated school health program. This joint position paper affirms schools as an important partner in health promotion. To maximize the impact of school wellness policies on strengthening comprehensive, integrated nutrition services in schools nationwide, ADA, SNA, and SNE recommend specific strategies in the following key areas: nutrition education and promotion, food and nutrition programs available on the school campus, school-home-community partnerships, and nutrition-related health services. (Contains 1 figure.)

Background: Environmental and policy influences are potentially the most powerful and yet the least understood strategies for reversing the current childhood obesity epidemic. Methods: This essay focuses on the school lunch environment and examines the key legal and policy factors that affect competitive foods or foods of minimal nutritional value (FMNV) in schools. The essay also analyzes the latest, proposed federal legislation on redefining competitive foods. Results: FMNV compete for children's coins and calories in the school food environment. The emerging scientific record on the negative impact competitive foods have on children's diet and health is significantly stronger than when Congress and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) secretary first deemed the connection sufficient to take action. The Child Nutrition Promotion and School Lunch Protection Act of 2006, if enacted, will provide additional authority to the USDA and supply science-based federal guidance to local schools. Opposition to this legislation may come from the local school districts, the food industry, parents, and children. Conclusions: Defining competitive foods in a federally consistent manner and eliminating competitive foods from our nation's schools are food fight that will evidently be fought by legislative efforts at the local, state, and federal level. The food industry, as history illustrates, will likely work hard to weaken any regulatory efforts and could potentially demand that this fight end up requiring judicial review.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jada.2005.10.038 Byline: Sheila Fleischhacker, Katherine L. Cason, Cheryl Achterberg Abstract: This study explored the types of food served at a Head Start child-care center compared with that center's monthly menus. The study design was direct observation of the food provided by a Head Start center throughout the school day (Monday through Friday; 8:45 am to 2:30 pm) from January 4 to June 20, 2002, and analysis of this center's monthly menus. The numbers of meals directly observed for each type of meal service were: breakfast (n=96), lunch (n=95), and afternoon snack (n=78). These meals were compared with six monthly menus. Of the 269 meals and snacks compared, only three breakfast meals and an "ethnic day" matched the meals described on the provided menu. These findings illustrate that this center's menu was not consistently followed and therefore could not be used as an estimate of the preschoolers' intake or used as an educational or informational tool for parents/caregivers. Future research should verify how common these findings are among other Child and Adult Care Food Program child-care centers. Results may provide direction for development of the US Department of Agriculture's Child and Adult Care Food Program training for foodservice workers and educational materials focusing on menu development, appropriate substitutions, and the importance of using menus as a nutrition education tool.